Safety and Certification of Discontinuous Fiber Composite Structures

The overarching goals of the proposed study are a) to characterize, in-situ, the main failure mechanisms occurring in thermoset and thermoplastic Discontinuous Fiber Composites (DFCs), b) to develop a physically-based modeling approach that will ultimately lead to a certification process for DFC materials and structures based primarily on analysis, supported by relatively modest experimental verification, and c) to develop technical guidance suitable for inclusion in the CMH-17 Handbook.

To characterize the failure mechanisms in DFCs and to observe the damage evolution in DFCs, PIs will take advantage of a state-of-the-art dual source X-ray CT scanner. This will allow in-situ inspection of DFC’s micro-structures at a resolution of microns, potentially unveiling the unique mechanisms of damage formation in DFCs. Based on the information provided by the proposed experimental tasks, numerical analysis of the main failure mechanisms of DFCs will be conducted. This will ultimately lead to the development of a physically-based failure model for intra-laminar and inter-laminar damage in DFCs. Once validated, the proposed computational and experimental framework can be used to provide insights and guidelines for the efficient non-destructive inspection of DFC structures.