Research Initiation Award: Understanding Concentrated Fiber Suspensions and Deformation of Flexible Fibers in Fiber Reinforced Composite Materials Processing

研究启动奖为历史上黑人学院和大学的初级和中级职业教师提供支持，他们正在建立新的研究项目或重新定向和重建现有的研究项目。预计该奖项将有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和效率，改善其所在机构的研究和教学，并使本科生参与研究经验。 授予Prairie View A M University的奖项在许多领域具有潜在的更广泛的影响。该项目的目标是了解纤维增强复合材料加工中集中的纤维悬浮和柔性纤维的变形，并推进复合材料的设计和制造。这些研究活动的成果在纤维增强复合材料加工、药物输送、血细胞运输和空气尘埃漂移等领域具有潜在的应用价值。本研究的主要目的是建立一个新的基于有限元的模型，以理解纤维在粘性流体中的悬浮和变形，设计一个新的控制纤维相互作用和变形的本构方程，并对模型进行实验验证。这些目标将通过开发基于有限元的仿真软件包来实现，该软件包对具有随机初始取向和分离的致密纤维之间的相互作用进行物理建模，定性和定量地建立纤维对齐率与纤维-纤维相互作用以及纤维变形之间的相关性，并建立实验系统来验证该模型。该项目将提供一个系统的模型，能够解决纤维-纤维相互作用和纤维变形，目前在复合材料制造中尚未解决的关键领域。该本构方程为复合材料研究者预测和控制纤维运动提供了一种新的模型，从而生产出性能优良的最终产品。

Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing research programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at his home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Prairie View A&M University has potential broader impact in a number of areas. The goal of the project is to understand concentrated fiber suspensions and deformation of flexible fibers in fiber reinforced composite materials processing and advance the design and manufacture of composite materials. The outcomes of these research activities have potential applications in areas such as fiber reinforced composites processing, drug delivery, blood cell transport and air dust drift. Undergraduate students will be involved in the research and the fiber motion tracking system will be an important laboratory facility for teaching purposes.The objectives of the research are to develop a new finite element based model in understanding concentrated fiber suspensions and fiber deformation in a viscous fluid; design a novel constitutive equation governing fiber interaction and deformation; and provide the experimental validation of the model. These objectives will be achieved by developing a finite element based simulation package to physically model the interactions among dense fibers with random initial orientations and separations, qualitatively and quantitatively establishing the correlation between fiber alignment rates and fiber-fiber interaction as well as fiber deformation, and setting up an experimental system to validate the model. This project will provide a systematic model capable of addressing fiber-fiber interaction and fiber deformation, critical areas that are currently unresolved in composite materials manufacturing. The developed constitutive equation will offer composites researchers a new model to predict and control fiber motion so as to produce the final products with excellent performance.