Project

Experimental analysis and characterisation of tiled laminates and sandwich panels: a new class of structurally robust building components

Code
3S034019
Duration
01 November 2019 → 31 October 2023
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
  • Engineering and technology
    • Polymer composites
Keywords
sandwich panels
 
Project description

Tiled Composites (TC) are a bio-inspired oblique layered material, composed of stacking individual plies in a tiled fashion and joining them together with a polymer to form a rigid structural material. This concept has great potential in different sectors as it allows the manufacturing of composite plates from tiled strips of fabric which opens up the door for robotised production. The concept of Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) based TC’s in structural applications is an innovative adaptation of the classical sandwich panel where skin-core delamination after accidental damage cannot grow, rendering a robust FRP sandwich concept. We call this concept a tiled sandwich. In addition, a plate material is created where the reinforcement is not parallel to the outer surfaces, called a tiled laminate. The project has the goal to understand and model these concepts and push the state-of-the-art since this knowledge is currently non-existing. This project focuses on two different implementations namely a FRP composite and a hybrid metal-composite. A framework for modelling and characterisation will be developed through a multiscale approach at three levels: meso, macro and structural. The intended multi-scale modelling is a sequential approach, with a hierarchy of computational efforts supported by experiments. The expected results are experimentally validated models on these three levels for the two different implementations.