Influence of fibre steering on the bearing performance of bolted joints in 3D printed pseudo-woven CFRP composites

Aiming to improve the bearing performance of bolted joints in carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites, this study investigates the impact of steered fibre paths around the hole edge within pseudo-woven (interlaced) composites that are manufactured by 3D printing. The influence of fibre steering on the crack initiation and propagation was examined through double-lap bearing tests performed on four distinct cases. Parallel to the comprehensive experimental study, digital image correlation (DIC) and X-ray computed microtomography (micro-CT) scans were performed to aid in understanding and identifying the various damage mechanisms in each specimen type. Results revealed that different patterns provided varying bearing abilities, with an employed pattern improving the initial bearing strength, initial fracture energy and ultimate fracture energy of the 3D printed pseudo-woven composite by 23.5%, 363.7% and 29.6%, respectively. Consequently, fibre steering in composites is found to be a promising method to tailor the bearing behaviour of bolted joints as required

A novel approach for 3D discrete element modelling the progressive delamination in unidirectional CFRP composites

This study proposed a novel approach based on the 3D discrete element method (DEM) to simulate the progressive delamination in unidirectional carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite laminates. A hexagonal packing strategy was used for modelling 0∘ representative plies, the interface between different plies was modelled with one bond and seven bonds following the conservation of energy principle and a power law. The number of representative layers and the stiffness of bonds within these layers were calibrated with a comparison of results obtained from finite element method and theoretical analysis. DEM simulations of delamination with both interface models were conducted on unidirectional composites for double cantilever beam (DCB), end-loaded split (ELS) and fixed-ratio mixed-mode (FRMM) tests. It was found that the seven-bond interface model has a better agreement with experimental data in all three tests than the one-bond interface model by adopting the proposed seven-bond arrangement in terms of the progressive delamination process. The main advantages of the present interface model are its simplicity, robustness and computational efficiency when elastic bonds are used in the DEM models

Experimental and Numerical Study of Low-Velocity Impact Damage in Sandwich Panel with UHMWPE Composite Facings

This paper is concerned with the low-velocity impact (LVI) response behaviour of sandwich composite panels (SCPs) with ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) composite facings and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)/Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) foam cores. A series of LVI tests with SCPs subjected to 50 J, 80 J and 110 J were conducted to examine their impact characteristics and damage mechanisms. LVI-induced internal damage in the SCPs were characterised by compute micro-tomography (μCT) analysis. The effects of UHMWPE areal density and foam type on the LVI responses and associated failure modes of the panels were also examined. The experimental results showed that the SCP with a PET foam core exhibited higher impact strength and energy absorption performance than those of the panel with a PVC foam core. In addition, a finite element (FE) model incorporating the Puck’s failure criteria, cohesive law and crushable foam plasticity model was developed and validated to predict the intra- and inter-laminar damages of SCPs. Finally, several failure mechanisms (fibre failure, matrix cracking and local delamination) of SCPs during LVI was thoroughly discussed. The results show the UH170-PET specimen has the best impact resistance and energy absorption performance. The parametric analysis of the areal density and foam type has revealed that these parameters can be optimised for the best LVI resistance of SCPs. These findings are helpful for designing lightweight foam-based sandwich composite structures with superior impact resistance

A micromechanics and machine learning coupled approach for failure prediction of unidirectional CFRP composites under triaxial loading: A preliminary study

This study presents a hybrid method based on artificial neural network (ANN) and micro-mechanics for the failure prediction of IM7/8552 unidirectional (UD) composite lamina under triaxial loading. The ANN is trained offline by numerical data from a high-fidelity micromechanics-based representative volume element (RVE) model using the finite element method (FEM). The RVE adopts identified constituent parameters from inverse analysis and calibrated interface strengths form uniaxial and biaxial tests. A hybrid loading strategy is proposed for the RVE under triaxial loading to obtain the failure points on sliced surfaces whilst maintaining the constant stress at different surfaces. It has been found that the ANN algorithm is robust in the failure prediction of the UD lamina when subjected to different triaxial loading conditions, with over 97.5% accuracy being achieved by the shallow ANN model, where only two hidden layers and 560 samples are used. The predicted 3D failure surface based on trained ANN model has an elliptical paraboloid shape and shows an extremely high strength in biaxial compression. The approach could be used to inform the modification of existing failure criteria and to propose ANN-based failure criteria

An optimal control method for time-dependent fluid-structure interaction problems

In this article, we derive an adjoint fluid-structure interaction (FSI) system in an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) framework, based upon a one-field finite element method. A key feature of this approach is that the interface condition is automatically satisfied and the problem size is reduced since we only solve for one velocity field for both the primary and adjoint system. A velocity (and/or displacement)-matching optimisation problem is considered by controlling a distributed force. The optimisation problem is solved using a gradient descent method, and a stabilised Barzilai-Borwein method is adopted to accelerate the convergence, which does not need additional evaluations of the objective functional. The proposed control method is validated and assessed against a series of static and dynamic benchmark FSI problems, before being applied successfully to solve a highly challenging FSI control problem