U.S.-France Cooperative Research: Deformation Properties of Elastomers and Fiber Suspensions

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

9981404CohenThis three-year award for U.S.-France cooperative research in materials engineering involves Claude Cohen and a graduate student from Cornell University and Arnaud Poitou and Mohend Chaouche of the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan, France. The project, supported under a joint program of the National Science Foundation, and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), will facilitate collaboration on the development of constitutive models for the behavior of well-defined and characterized elastomers under biaxial deformation conditions. Elastomers are rubber-like synthetic polymers. The investigators will synthesize fiber-reinforced, well-defined elastomers and study the role of adhesive contact between fibers. Because fiber contact, orientation and distribution govern electrical conductivity, their study is important to the development of a predictive model. The project takes advantage of U.S. and French complementary expertise and access to a unique multiaxial French instrument, known as ASTREE. The instrument will enable the researchers to process the materials under an electrical field and permit them to discriminate among existing models whose predictions are similar under uniaxial flows. The proposal will also advance understanding of the properties, processing of elastomers and their potential uses in the automotive industry. The award will support the incremental costs of the international collaboration; that is, the travel to Paris, France and subsistence expenses of the U.S. investigators. The CNRS will support visits to the U.S. by the French investigators.