Aerospace composites mechanical damage prediction through multi-scale modelling

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The replacement of metallic aerospace parts by the introduction of composites in the 1960's offered the promises of lighter aircraft. Lighter aircraft consume less fuel, which provides a competitive advantage to aircraft manufacturers, and reduce polluting emanations, which is essential to ensure Earth's sustainability. Yet, weight savings in Canadian aircraft range from 0 to 5%, whereas senior aerospace composites experts believe that it could safely be around 15%, and beyond with new composites. Prohibitively expensive certification costs and over-conservative safety factors contribute to this poor performance. This situation must absolutely be remedied to maintain Canada's competitiveness in aerospace. Accurate composites predictive damage models could significantly decrease the weight of composite parts, since: i) some certification tests could be replaced by predictions, which would accelerate the introduction newer materials of improved performance and ii) accurate models will lead to lower safety factors, and hence, to lighter aircraft. The World Wide Failure Exercise on composites revealed that current models cannot predict composite failure within reasonable accuracy for every load case. Composites damage is a complex process initiated by sub-micron cracks that propagate through the hierarchy of scales. Classical continuum mechanic is ill-suited for handling these discontinuities. The proposed research program aims at developing a multi-scale framework for predicting composites failure by simultaneously investigating: i) experimental methods for identifying relevant material parameters, ii) models for predicting composites damage initiation and propagation and iii) numerical strategies for delivering efficient composites damage predictions. The program relies on Peridynamics, which is a relatively new formulation for continuum mechanics that eludes most of the classical approaches' shortcomings. The research will be carried out by 4 PhD students and 1 post-doctoral fellow, supported by 13 undergraduate students and 1 research associate. Most graduate students will be co-supervised by professors of complementary expertise (experimental, theoretical and numerical). Every PhD student will perform a short-time (2-3 weeks) internship with well-known international experts, as well as a four-month internship in an aerospace company as part of a larger training program aiming at improving the aerospace industry readinyness level of graduate students. This program should trigger the essential paradigm shift for properly addressing composites damage prediction, and hence reap the full weight reduction potential composites offer. The methodology is tailored for the aerospace industry to accelerate its transfer with the next generation of experts that will be specifically trained for that objective throughout the program.