University of Bristol PhD student, Emily Leung, presented a poster and it was part of her Phd work that focused on using mirror assisted imaging techniques to detect and characterize the interface fracture through the face sheets of sandwich structures.
Emily reported that Comptest 2023 was an amazing conference, and it was great to disseminate her work to the attendees and make new connections. Senior Research Associate, Tobias Laux, was also in attendance and confirmed the amazing networking opportunity that the CompTest conference offerred.
11th International Conference on Composite Testing and Model Identification (May 31 – June 2)
CerTest took on CompTest this month with Professor Janice Dulieu Barton’s delivering a Keynote Presentation on Full Field Data Fusion (FFDF) to characterise subsurface defects in composite structures.
Her presentation was one of the highlights of the conference and was very well attended. To view her fantastic presentation, please click here.
JEC World is the global trade show for composite materials and their applications. Held in Paris, JEC World is the industry’s leading event, hosting all the major players in a spirit of innovation, business, and networking.
Principal Investigator, Professor Ole Thomsen, attended along with Professor Janice Barton to learn about new developments taking place in the composite world. With hundreds of product launches, startup cnferences, live demonstrations and networking opportunities, JEC World offers an amazing opportunity for the CerTest team to learn more about new and exciting developments that could impact or influence our research, both current and future, of the certification process and the reshaping of the testing pyramid.
There has been lots going on for two of our CerTest PhD students at the University of Bath. They have each had notable successes this year with their research outputs.
CerTest Research Associate’s, Tobi Laux and Riccardo Cappello, have recently been visiting the University of Southampton from the University of Bristol. They are currently working on the development of a novel sub-component testing procedure that provides insights that cannot be obtained through traditional coupon or full-scale testing.
To achieve this, we are combining full-field imaging techniques such as Digital Image Correlation and Thermoelastic Stress Analysis to capture detailed information about the behaviour of materials under complex loading conditions.
The activity is conducted on a bespoke multiaxial test rig housed in the Large Structures Testing Laboratory (LSTL) at the University of Southampton, which requires the team to travel there regularly.
Abstract: Recent advances in additive manufacturing with continuously-reinforced composites (AM-CC) has enabled the use of this process to realize mass-efficient, topology-optimized (TO), bioinspired structures. The consideration of the use of AM-CC-TO primary structure has raised critical questions about this material’s performance and limits of manufacturability, both linked to defects at multiple length scales. This talk will briefly cover challenges related to AM-CC-TO structure, including defect structures, topological junctions, and reconsideration of structural allowables for attritable (limited-lifetime) aircraft.
10:00 to 11:00 20th February 2023 University of Bristol, Queens Building, Faculty Board Room
We would like to thank Jevan once more for the seminar which was well received by all those who attended, both virtually and by more than 40 people online.
Dan Zenkert is, since, 2001 a professor in Lightweight Structures at the department of Engineering Mechanics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.
Dan’s early research work was mainly focused on sandwich structures and sandwich core materials. He has also worked with cost optimisation methods for composite structures and recyclable composite materials. His current research interest is the area of so called structural batteries aiming at developing structurally load carrying materials that simultaneously store electrical energy like a battery. This research is now extended to include more functionalities to carbon fibre composites, such as sensing, morphing and energy harvesting, all properties intrinsically built into the load carrying material itself.
The presentation, on the 3rd Feb 2023, gave a brief introduction to so called structural batteries which in short are carbon fibre composite laminates that store electrical energy just like a lithium-ion battery. But more functions can be integrated using the coupling between mechanics and electrochemistry:, strain sensing, shape-morphing and energy harvesting – all built in to the material itself.
Rafael Ruiz Iglesias a PhD student and CerTest project team member based in the Bristol Composites Institute supervised by Professors Janice Barton and Ole Thomsen, and Dr Geir Olafsson has received the British Society for Strain Measurement (BSSM), Young Stress Analyst prize. The competition is sponsored by Airbus and involves writing a 1000 summary of the applicants project, the project summaries are ranked by a panel of experts in Experimental Mechanics and the top four applicants are invited to present their work at the BSSM Annual Conference. and this year took place in Oxford at St Anne’s college. The competition is open internationally and the other three finalists came from Netherlands, Portugal and UK Industry.
Rafa’s presentation was entitled “Subsurface Damage Assessment in Composite Laminates Using a Novel Full Field Imaging Technique” which is aligned to the EPSRC funded Programme Grant Certification for Design – Reshaping the Testing Pyramid. Each finalist was allowed 15 minutes for their presentation followed by five minutes of intense questioning; there were over 100 delegates in the audience. Rafa’s presentation was extremely visual and engaging, which the judges appreciated and placed his work first.
The outcome of the competition was announced at the conference dinner, which provided a very nice end to the evening with Rafa receiving first prize. Congratulations to Rafa!
That’s it! – sadly ECCM is all over for another year.
What a tremendous conference – with so many fascinating and truly inspiring presentations given. All of the CerTest project group were able to meet old friends and to make many new connections.
Aewis Hii Presenting: “A Kinematically Consistent Thick Shell Homogenisation”
Rafael Ruiz Iglesias (PhD Student, CerTest) said: “It’s been a great conference that composites researchers used for sharing ideas, network and having a good time! I would like to thanks first the Bristol Composites Institute and The CerTest project for this super opportunity and my supervisors Janice Barton, Ole Thybo Thomsen and Geir Olafsson for their big support through this event.”
The ECCM20 Conference got off to a great start with an opening Reception at the Olympic museum overlooking Lake Geneva and the incredible mountainous scenery beyond.
Over the past two days members of the CerTest project team have already given some excellent presentations of their recent work. For some members this is the first in-person conference they have been able to attend, and all of the team are pleased to be able to network with others to share their research, discover synergies with the research of others, and forge new connections.
CerTest Team Members at Reception
So far we have had the pleasure of hearing presentations from the following speakers:-
Monday, 27 June
Garden 6 / 17:15 – speaker: Roy BULLOCK (61961). Title: Ply Orientation Effects in Multidirectional Carbon/ Epoxy Open-Hole Specimens Subjected to Shear Loading.
Garden 6 / 18:45 – speaker: Neha CHANDARANA (62343). Title: Damage characterisation in open-hole composites using acoustic emission and finite element, validated by X-ray CT.
Tuesday 28 June Garden 8 / 11:45 – speaker: Tobias LAUX (62344). Title: Hybrid testing for composite substructures.
Garden 5 / 14:30 – speaker: Aewis HII (62521). Title: Development of a Concurrent Multi-scale Analysis Framework using Shell Elements for the Progressive Failure Analysis of Composites.
This evening Prof. Janice Barton will present:
Garden 9 / 18:15 – speaker: Janice BARTON (62222). Title: A new test for validating models of lightning strike damage on CFRP laminates.
With many more to come over the next few days! Keep watching this space for a final update….
