CAREER: Mechanical Behavior of Graphene-Carbon Fiber Composites

这笔学院早期职业发展(Career)计划补助金将发展基础科学，用于设计和表征一种新的损伤容限复合材料家族，这些材料具有坚固、坚硬和延展性。碳纤维增强聚合物基复合材料目前被认为是最先进的国防、能源和交通应用。然而，这些聚合物基复合材料受到一些限制，包括脆性断裂和较差的损伤容限，这两者都会导致复合材料结构的灾难性破坏。这种新型复合材料基于碳纤维基质中的石墨烯，解决了传统聚合物基质替代品的主要缺点，如缺乏延展性和易损坏，因此有可能帮助多个行业每年节省数十亿美元的故障和检测成本。石墨烯-碳纤维(基质)复合材料的无聚合物特性将使其能够抵抗高冲击能量、电磁干扰(EMI)、高温和恶劣环境。这些多功能方面将显著降低成本和设计复杂性，并可能导致制造更安全、更耐用的国防、能源和交通应用结构。该项目还将建立有效的平台，吸引和培训这一新兴领域的学生，并使新墨西哥大学机械工程专业的招生人数不断增加，特别是女性。该赠款还支持旨在提高当地少数族裔(包括美国原住民大学生和西班牙裔K-12学生)对STEM教育兴趣的活动。该项目将调查和阐明可用于控制和定制碳纳米复合材料，特别是石墨烯-碳纤维复合材料的延展性和损伤发展的潜在机制。基于石墨烯的材料最近得到了广泛的研究，主要是通过结合试错法来优化其力学性能，而不是有效地研究以了解其潜在的机理。这些研究显示了有希望的结果，但由于石墨烯材料具有巨大的设计参数空间，因此不能用于定制机械性能。本项目利用数值模拟和最先进的多尺度表征方法相结合的方法来了解和定制石墨烯-碳纤维(基质)复合材料的力学性能。研究目标包括了解石墨烯-碳纤维界面的应力传递机制和阐明这些复合材料的潜在失效机制。这些潜在机制的解决方案将回答一些长期存在的关于纳米复合材料强度-延展性权衡的科学问题和挑战。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program grant will develop the fundamental science for the design and characterization a new family of damage-tolerant composite materials that are strong, stiff, and ductile. Carbon fiber reinforced polymer-matrix composites are currently considered state-of-the-art for defense, energy, and transportation applications. These polymer-matrix composites, however, suffer several limitations, including brittle fracture and poor damage tolerance, both of which result in catastrophic failures in composite structures. The novel composites, based on graphene within a carbon fiber matrix, address major shortcomings of traditional polymer-matrix alternatives such as the lack of ductility and the propensity to damage and therefore has the potential to help save billions of dollars in failure and inspection costs across multiple industries on an annual basis. The polymer-free nature of the graphene-carbon fiber (matrix) composite will enable resistance to high impact energy, electromagnetic interference (EMI), high temperatures, and harsh environments. These multifunctional aspects will significantly reduce cost and design complexity and can potentially result in the manufacturing of safer and more durable structures for defense, energy, and transportation applications. This project will also result in effective platforms to attract and train students in this emerging field and has the increasing enrollment in Mechanical Engineering at the University of New Mexico, specifically women. The grant also supports activities directed at increasing the interest in STEM education in the local community among ethnic minorities including Native American college students and Hispanic K-12 students.This project will investigate and elucidate the underlying mechanisms that can be used to control and tailor the ductility and damage progression in carbonaceous nanocomposites, specifically in graphene-carbon fiber composites. Graphene-based materials have been extensively studied recently, mainly by incorporating trial and error approaches, to optimize their mechanical properties rather than effectively studying to understand the underlying mechanisms. These studies have shown promising results but cannot be used to tailor mechanical properties due to the vast design parameter space available to graphene-based materials. This project utilizes a combined numerical modeling and state-of-the-art multi-scale characterization approach to understand and tailor mechanical properties in the graphene-carbon fiber (matrix) composites. The research objectives include the understanding of the stress-transfer mechanisms at the graphene-carbon fiber interface and elucidation of the underlying failure mechanisms in these composites. These resolution of these underlying mechanisms will answer some of the long-standing scientific questions and challenges regarding the strength-ductility trade-off in nanocomposites.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.