Structurally Efficient Design Incorporating Material Anisotropy

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Wind Energy)
Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial)
Energy Efficiency(Transport)

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Metallurgy and Materials)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr PM Weaver
Aerospace Engineering
University of Bristol

Standard

EPSRC

01 October 2002

30 September 2007

60 months

£259,066

Civil eng. & built environment

South West

Engineering Fellowships -- Process Environment and Sustainability

Dr PM Weaver, Aerospace Engineering, University of Bristol

Composite laminated materials have widespread use in structural applications due to excellent ratios of in-plane strength and stiffness per unit weight. The vast majority of these applications preclude anisotropic material behaviour, partly due to complex modelling issues. This is unfortunate because many of the added design freedoms given to the designer, in terms of novel structural response from anisotropic properties, are not exploited. This proposer wants to rectify the latter situation by providing designers and decision makers with clear and concise modelling tools that empower such people to make informed design decisions, taking advantage of anisotropic effects. The result is potentially lighter, cheaper structural components that have application in the next generation of reusable launch vehicle (space shuttle), future large passenger aircraft, helicopters, rotor blades and wind turbine blades. In everyday use, this could mean more fuel efficient cars (lightweight bodies), more efficient sports equipment and biomedical applications that utilise anisotropic material response.The most efficient structures resist applied loading by developing tensile and compressive membrane stresses. Therefore, compressive behaviour is crucial in lightweight structures, and so the emphasis will be placed on linear bifurcation and postbuckling analyses using approximate, simplified displacement fields to produce closed form solutions. The solutions are approximate because although the governing differential equations are satisfied, some of the boundary conditions will be violated. The consequence of this will be assessed by comparison with finite element analyses. Once these closed form solutions are formed, appropriate design charts will be constructed that facilitate selection procedures. These charts will be formed from non-dimensional parameters (where possible) that are the coefficients of the governing differential equations

01/01/07