14 DAY TRIAL // The quest for new composite materials has been raging on for years, as experts realized the tremendous potential they hold for a wide array of applications. Recently, scientists in the UK received funds to start developing high performance, fiber-reinforced polymer composites.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) awarded a £6 million, six-year program grant to experts at the University of Bristol (UB) and the Imperial College London (ICL).
The money will be used by experts with the UB Advanced Composites Center for Innovation and the ICL Science and The Composites Center to develop the new material, which holds great promise for the future.
According to scientists, the new material is important because it would help cover a gap in security that currently affects existing fiber-reinforced polymer composites. Though they are very strong and stiff, they can give way catastrophically and without warning, with grave consequences.
Such materials are currently being used in everything from fishing rods to aircraft, but the problem is that the damage they suffer rarely becomes visible before they give way completely. The UB/ICL team needs to develop a material that does not have this flaw.
All the composites the collaboration will design will need to be capable of sustaining large damage and deformations without breaking. BAE Systems, Halliburton, Hexcel, Mouchel, Rolls-Royce and Vestas are among some of the key supporters for the new investigation.
UB professor Michael Wisnom and ICL professor Alexander Bismarck are the leaders of the study. They say that conventional composites are made up of glass, carbon and aramid fibers.
“Conventional polymer matrix composites offer high strength and stiffness, low weight, and low susceptibility to fatigue and corrosion, and we are witnessing a rapid expansion of their use in aerospace and other applications, such as wind turbine blades, sporting goods and civil engineering,” says Wisnom.
“Despite this progress, a fundamental limitation of current composites is their inherent brittleness. Failure can be sudden and catastrophic, with little warning or residual load carrying capacity,” adds the UB expert, who is also the director of ACCIS.
“High performance ductile composites will enable robust panels, which dent without significant loss in performance, and super-light, complex structures which indicate an overload by significant deformation but continue to support load without catastrophic failure,” adds Bismarck.
“Such materials will provide greater reliability and safety, together with reduced design and maintenance requirements, and longer service life,” he concludes.