Idealized textile composites for experimental/analytical correlation

Textile composites are fiber reinforced materials produced by weaving, braiding, knitting, or stitching. These materials offer possible reductions in manufacturing costs compared to conventional laminated composites. Thus, they are attractive candidate materials for aircraft structures. To date, numerous experimental studies have been performed to characterize the mechanical performance of specific textile architectures. Since many materials and architectures are of interest, there is a need for analytical models to predict the mechanical properties of a specific textile composite material. Models of varying sophistication have been proposed based on mechanics of materials, classical laminated plate theory, and the finite element method. These modeling approaches assume an idealized textile architecture and generally consider a single unit cell. Due to randomness of the textile architectures produced using conventional processing techniques, experimental data obtained has been of limited use for verifying the accuracy of these analytical approaches. This research is focused on fabricating woven textile composites with highly aligned and accurately placed fiber tows that closely represent the idealized architectures assumed in analytical models. These idealized textile composites have been fabricated with three types of layer nesting configurations: stacked, diagonal, and split-span. Compression testing results have identified strength variations as a function of nesting. Moire interferometry experiments are being used to determine localized deformations for detailed correlation with model predictions

Test Methods for Composites Crashworthiness: A Review

Crashworthiness is a material\u27s ability to absorb energy during a vehicle crash. Modern automobiles, aircraft, rail vehicles, and marine vessels incorporate crashworthy structures. The use of composite materials, with their high specific strength and stiffness, can result in efficient and safe vehicles. Mechanical testing is essential for obtaining a deeper understanding of the crash-worthiness capabilities of composite materials. This review highlights the many aspects involved in crashworthiness testing of composites, including a brief overview of the field of crashworthiness, general crushing behavior, typical testing methodologies, and the effect of the loading rate and friction on test results

Boundedness criteria for a class of second order nonlinear differential equations with delay

summary:We consider certain class of second order nonlinear nonautonomous delay differential equations of the form $$a(t)x^{\prime \prime } + b(t)g(x,x^\prime ) + c(t)h(x(t-r))m(x^\prime ) = p(t,x,x^\prime )$$ and $$(a(t)x^\prime )^\prime + b(t)g(x,x^\prime ) + c(t)h(x(t-r))m(x^\prime ) = p(t,x,x^\prime ),$$ where $a$, $b$, $c$, $g$, $h$, $m$ and $p$ are real valued functions which depend at most on the arguments displayed explicitly and $r$ is a positive constant. Different forms of the integral inequality method were used to investigate the boundedness of all solutions and their derivatives. Here, we do not require construction of the Lyapunov-Krasovski\v ı functional to establish our results. This work extends and improve on some results in the literature

Characterizing Facesheet/Core Disbonding in Honeycomb Core Sandwich Structure

Results are presented from an experimental investigation into facesheet core disbonding in carbon fiber reinforced plastic/Nomex honeycomb sandwich structures using a Single Cantilever Beam test. Specimens with three, six and twelve-ply facesheets were tested. Specimens with different honeycomb cores consisting of four different cell sizes were also tested, in addition to specimens with three different widths. Three different data reduction methods were employed for computing apparent fracture toughness values from the test data, namely an area method, a compliance calibration technique and a modified beam theory method. The compliance calibration and modified beam theory approaches yielded comparable apparent fracture toughness values, which were generally lower than those computed using the area method. Disbonding in the three-ply facesheet specimens took place at the facesheet/core interface and yielded the lowest apparent fracture toughness values. Disbonding in the six and twelve-ply facesheet specimens took place within the core, near to the facesheet/core interface. Specimen width was not found to have a significant effect on apparent fracture toughness. The amount of scatter in the apparent fracture toughness data was found to increase with honeycomb core cell size

Crash Safety Assurances Strategies for Future Plastic and Composite Intensive Vehicles (PCIVs)

This report addresses outstanding safety issues and research needs for Plastics and Composite Intensive Vehicles (PCIVs) to facilitate their safe deployment by 2020. PCIVs have the potential to revolutionize the automotive sector; however, the use of plastics and composite materials in automotive structures requires an in-depth knowledge of their unique performance characteristics in the crash and safety environment. Included in this report is a proposed definition of the PCIV, a review of potential safety benefits, lessons-learned, and progress to date towards crashworthiness of PCIVs as well as proposed safety performance specifications and research needs

Global Stability of a Premixed Reaction Zone (Time-Dependent Liñan’s Problem)

Global stability properties of a premixed, three-dimensional reaction zone are considered. In the nonadiabatic case (i.e., when there is a heat exchange between the reaction zone and the burned gases) there is a unique, spatially one-dimensional steady state that is shown to be unstable (respectively, asymptotically stable) if the reaction zone is cooled (respectively, heated) by the burned mixture. In the adiabatic case, there is a unique (up to spatial translations) steady state that is shown to be stable. In addition, the large-time asymptotic behavior of the solution is analyzed to obtain sufficient conditions on the initial data for stabilization. Previous partial numerical results on linear stability of one-dimensional reaction zones are thereby confirmed and extended