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Tensile Strength Prediction of Fibre-Hybrid Composites: A Multiscale Approach

Project description

Predicting damage in fibre-hybrid composites

Fibre-reinforced composites hold great potential for creating lightweight structures in a vast number of applications, from aerospace and civil infrastructure to sport goods. Combining two or more fibre types could further enhance and tailor designs, creating tougher and more damage-tolerant structures. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the HyComp project plans to develop a modelling framework to predict the strength of hybrid fibre composites and detect failure mechanisms across multiple length scales. Detecting failure early in the design process helps decrease the cost of experimental campaigns.

Objective

With the growing environmental concerns, lightweight structural designs are becoming increasingly important as they help meet the global emission regulations. Fibre-reinforced composites are the current state-of-the-art for lightweight structures and their use is rising exponentially in a wide range of applications from aerospace to sporting goods. They exhibit a range of useful material properties—notably specific stiffness and strength—whilst affording rich design flexibility. Fibre-hybridisation further increases the design space for tailoring and is a promising strategy for improving toughness and damage tolerance, which otherwise are low for traditional non-hybrid composites. By combining two or more fibre types, a better balance in mechanical properties is obtained which often leads to synergetic effects or to properties that neither of the constituents possesses. Due to these advantages, fibre-hybrid composites rapidly gaining market share in structural applications.
Even though fibre-hybrid composites are attractive, they also pose more challenges in terms of their strength predictions. Under tension, composites suffer a range of failures typically associated with fibre breakage, matrix cracks or interfacial issues; these mechanisms interact in a complicated way at a variety of physical length-scales. The added complexity of having more than one fibre type further increases the complexity in the modelling of mechanistic processes. Therefore, there is a need for developing a modelling framework to predict the strength of fibre-hybrid composites, considering the failure mechanisms on multiple length-scales. Using the model, one can understand better the influencing parameters on the failure of fibre-hybrids without the need for extensive experimental campaigns. Ultimately, this development may lead to novel materials that enable new applications, not possible at this moment.

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Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2020

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Coordinator

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Net EU contribution
€ 178 320,00
Address
OUDE MARKT 13
3000 Leuven
Belgium
Region
Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Leuven
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 178 320,00