Pultrusion of Multi-Functional Thermoplastic Composites for Harsh Environments

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The current climate crisis our generation is facing will require human ingenuity to find solutions in order to survive harsh environments. Human infrastructures are increasingly exposed to high precipitation levels, heat waves, flash floods, and wind gusts. Moreover, when exploring outside our own planet, these harsh environments come in form of lunar dust, extreme temperature gradients, and vacuum atmospheres. The structural elements of our infrastructures will not only need to withstand these extreme conditions, but also be able to gather information about their solicitation state, and morph to respond to changing environments. The long-term objective of our program is to develop pultruded multifunctional thermoplastic composite structures for harsh environments. The pultrusion of thermoplastic composites uses reinforcement fibers and thermoplastic polymers precursors that are pulled into a series of pultrusion modules to achieve a beam-like composite product. During the recent years, we matured this automated manufacturing technology thereby increasing its affordability. For the next five years, we will first integrate the motion sensing function to pultruded composites. Motion sensing is important to inform the user of critical structural movements in harsh and remote environments. The motion sensing function will be created by adding electrical property modifiers such as nanoparticles and semi-conducting multi-filament yarns. The electrical properties will be monitored during mechanical solicitation to indicate the pultruded beam deformation. Secondly, we will integrate the motion function to pultruded composites. Motion will help reconfigure the structure when exposed to harsh environments in remote settings. The motion function will be added by creating thermally activated artificial muscles, in the form of carbon reinforced thermoplastic elastomer coils. When exposed to a temperature increase, the coils length will expand therefore creating the desired motion. The heat source for the coil expansion can come from the surrounding environment or by integrating resistive heating sources. The motion sensing, motion and heat source functions will be integrated in pultruded composites to produce multi-functional structures. Our low-cost multifunctional materials could find applications in building facades that open to offer natural cooling in hot summers and close to minimize heat losses during winters. Our multifunctional composites could also be used to position heat containment devices on a lunar rover during the long and cold lunar nights where dust damages mechanical systems with moving parts. Ten undergraduate, three Master's, and two doctoral students will be trained. This program will accelerate the transfer of multifunctional structures produced by pultrusion to the aerospace, automotive and sports equipment industries, which are major players in the Canadian economy.