Composite Materials Design
Welcome to the electronic version of Composite Materials (MY4150)This class aims to teach the origin of the mechanical behaviour and the manufacturing of modern composite materials. Each section includes a number of problems that you might like to try. Most of the problems are easily solved using MathCad and I have included in the index on this page links to those documents so that you may explore the world of designing new composite materials. Some of the concepts can be explored using the Java applets included with notes.
The Mathcad documents are formatted text to download just click on the icon by the description of the file content. If they show up in your browser just save them and then use MathCad to view them. You can configure netscape/internet explorer to download the files and automatically launch Mathcad for you. Alternatively, the newer versions of MathCad can load these documents directly from the web.
| Class Instructor: John Pilling. | 
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Course Content
Simple Aligned Continuous Fibres
| Determination of Elastic Modulii (Stiffness). See also elastic properties of other geometries | ||
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| Determination of Strength in Brittle Matrices. | ||
| Determination of Strength in Ductile Matrices. | ||
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| Compression behaviour | ||
| Effect of Orientation on elastic properties. | ||
| Effects of Orientation on Strength. Includes multiaxial stress and the methodology of evaluating stress and strain in a ply and the application of the Tsai-Hill Maximum strain energy failure criterion. | ||
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| Simple laminates and the approximatation of the properties of woven and random fibre composites as well as the stiffness and strength of angle ply laminates using the first ply failure criterion. Shows how properties of angle ply laminates vary with orientation. | ||
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| Hybrid Laminates and hybrid cloth (eg. carbon-kevlar). |
Short Fibre Composites
| Short fibre composites - Elastic Properties, Strength |
| Halpin-Tsai Equations |
Materials
| Polymer matrices and the chemistry of the thermosetting polymers. | ||||||
| Class 11 looks at the chemistry of thermoplastic polymer matrices. | ||||||
| Glass Fibres. | ||||||
| Organic Fibres | ||||||
| Carbon Fibre and Carbon-Carbon Composites. | ||||||
| Mechanics of Honeycombs
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| Mechanics of Open Cell Foams. | ||||||
| Mechanics of Closed Cell Foams. | ||||||
| Sandwich core composite structures |
Fracture and Fracture Toughness
| Linear Elastic fracture mechanics |
| Toughness in Composites - Fibre matrix debonding |
| Toughness in Composites - Fibre Pullout |
| Rubber Particle Toughening |
| Statistical Mechanics of Fibre Strength - Weibull Analysis |
Miscellaneous
| Practical hints on how to use polyester and epoxy resins correctly for laminating. |
| Mechanical - Thermal Properties of Selected Fibres/Matrices |
New for 2005-2006 Academic year
New Course NotesThe course notes are being rewritten with new illustrations and a more complete explanation of how to use MathCAD to implement the concepts discussed and detailed in the class in the form of DESIGN TOOLS. These tools, which will steadily build on the various concepts detailed in the class notes will enable you, the student, to design your own composite materials with whatever properties and to whatever design criteria you want. The examples start off simple and hopefully show you how to use MathCAD efficiently.
Comments welcome just email me as i'm no longer in my office!