Improving advanced two-dimensional braided composite materials for industrial applications: manufacturing, testing and modeling

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In recent decades, the aerospace, automotive, biomedical, civil, sports equipment fields, for example, have been using composite materials. Composite materials production and use constitute a multi-billion dollar industry. Composite materials have revolutionized a number of industries due to their lightweight, high mechanical performance, and environmental resistance. Such characteristics have led to important energy and material savings. Braids are one of the oldest textiles. Recently, high end industries, have explored, or are using, braided composite materials as one possible option in product and component development. Braided composites are very versatile materials, highly adaptable to a number of applications. The uptake of braided composites has been relatively slow compared to other composite material manufacturing processes. A manufacturing technique that is as versatile as braiding comes with a large number of considerations and complexities. The reasons few industries are using braided composites is that there are a number of challenges in developing and using advanced braided composite material: quality of manufacturing, comprehensive understanding of their properties and behaviour under complex and fatigue loading, and as a result, predicting their properties. For those interested in considering braided composites, the overall costs of the systems and the research required, often makes it a low return on investment solution. However, if these challenges are successfully addressed in a state-of-the-art equipped research facility, braiding can become a staple of advanced manufacturing for a very board range of industries. My research program in composite materials focuses on better understanding the behaviour and production of primarily two-dimensional braided composite materials, as well as translating our related discoveries to industry. In the past 10 years, my team and I at the Multipurpose Composite Group, have been making significant headway in meeting the braided composite manufacturing, mechanical testing, and mechanical property prediction challenges. This NSERC Discovery Grant proposal, which builds on the successes of previous grants, aims to address in the short term the following braided composite material challenges: using a machine vision system to improve the quality of the manufacturing process and braided composite end product; understanding the behaviour of braided composites under complex and fatigue loading scenarios; and develop new models, based on accurately measured geometry, to better predict mechanical properties as well as fatigue behaviour. My group has an exceptional environment (equipment and collaborators) in which to learn, grow and become academic and/or industrial leaders. For the next five years I expect to train 3 PhDs and 3 MSc, as well as 2 undergraduate students per year with this grant.