Bioinspired approaches for toughening of fibre reinforced polymer composites

In Nature, there are a large range of tough, strong, lightweight and multifunctional structures that can be an inspiration to better performingmaterials. Thiswork presents a review of structures found in Nature, frombiological ceramics and ceramics composites, biological polymers and polymers composites, biological cellular materials, biological elastomers to functional biological materials, and their main tougheningmechanisms, envisaging potential mimicking approaches that can be applied in advanced continuous fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composite structures. For this, themost common engineering compositemanufacturing processes and current composite damage mitigation approaches are analysed. This aims at establishing the constraints of biomimetic approaches development as these bioinspired structures are to be manufactured by composite technologies. Combining both Nature approaches and engineering composites developments is a route for the design and manufacturing of high mechanical performance and multifunctional composite structures, therefore new bioinspired solutions are proposed.This research was funded by the project “IAMAT—Introduction of advanced materials technologies into new product development for the mobility industries”, with reference MITP-TB/PFM/0005/2013, under the MIT-Portugal program and in the scope of projects with references UIDB/05256/2020 and UIDP/05256/2020, exclusively financed by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia

APPLIED ASPECTS OF TOURISM BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT IN THE CASPIAN SEA REGION

The development of tourist communication of the five Caspian region countries is considered one of the most relevant in the region's strategic aspects of economic development. This article deals with tourist resources and what functional mechanisms will develop tourism in the region. The article offers an overview of the state of tourism infrastructure of Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran over the past five years. The prospects of cruise tourism cooperation are considered. Opportunities for the development of cross-border tourism are analysed. The article raises the problems of ecology in the Caspian region, which is also a factor in the development of the tourist sphere. Since the ecology of the region directly depends on the development of oil and gas deposits, the solution of these problems is also possible only by joint efforts of the five countries