Providing Confidence in Durable Composites (DURACOMP)

Advanced composites have potentially transformative properties compared to other construction materials that offer unparalleled structural solutions. Composites have impacted the aerospace and automotive industries, resulting in lighter, energy efficient solutions. We aim to translate this paradigm to the construction industry by tackling the single largest factor limiting their uptake - durability. This will be achieved through the development of methodology/tools for durability assessment/design.
In the DURACOMP project the consortium team shall investigate the long-term degradation processes of construction composites in order to enhance confidence in their durability. We will achieve this through an ambitious, integrated programme of physical testing and computational modelling that will bring new insights into the behaviour of composites.
A structural-level testing programme, augmented by selected material-scale tests, coupled with uncertainty qualification and quantification, will be undertaken.
The consortium team will utilise advances in multi-scale analysis to develop a computational, predictive modelling capability for the response of degrading of composites. This will enable us to investigate and design the reliability of service lives of safety critical structures.

The result of fundamental research from this transformative project will be wanted by academic groups in aerospace, automotive, construction and marine who are working on developing computational methods for the life prediction of (safety critical) structures having components of composite material. National excellence in simulation and modelling, with significant international academic impact, will be maintained (and strengthened) because this project combines, uniquely, multi-scale modelling and stochastic reliability analysis with the addition of the computation taking account of societies having to adapt national infrastructure for environmental (climate) change. Structural and civil engineering academics researching with composites for construction will find the material and system-level component physical test results useful. In particular, it is expected that the test methods used to determine the properties for the computational modelling will be highly valued as the community now seeks reliable and relevant information to develop, simple, yet robust, approaches that can allow the design process of safety critical structures of composites to become similar to that with conventional construction materials. Further understanding on the behaviour of connections and joints subjected to fatigue and environmental loading will impact on design and practice, and in all engineering sectors using composite materials.

Five highly-skilled PDRAs will be a most important output from the DURACOMP project. Not only will these researchers have enhanced their specialist expertise, they will have received valuable continuing professional development through working as an integrated member in a larger team of 13 (of which eight are academics). The benefit of having a much larger network of contacts, with diverse expertise will provide for further impact during the PDRAs (industry or academic) careers, after the project ends. The skills obtained as a PDRA researcher working on the DURACOMP project will be valued by industry also.

The level of industry support at the start of the DURACOMP project is not high because the concept for the new paradigm is embryonic (not 12 months old and completion of the team membership was only in July 2012). Impact for industry, and for society at large, is seen by the team as for the medium- to long-term. It is an expectation that deliverables during the DURACOMP project will lead to new strategic partnerships with industry following the one-day workshops in months 24 and 35.These partnerships will speed-up commercial exploitation that helps to improve the nation's wellbeing, via the execution of future critical infrastructure (both for new build and refurbishment). Once the team has used the workshops to demonstrate to others that the new paradigm's methodologies can provide a vital resource for future societal benefits, national infrastructure stakeholders within the supply chain will want to support what natural follows after the DURACOMP project ends. This medium-term impact will lead to wealth creation by, for example, minimising material usage (and thereby CO2), and to the setting-up of a national centre for durability assessment of (low environmental impact) materials that have an exciting role to play in achieving sustainable construction. The long-term impact will be fewer failures during the service lives of infrastructure because design uncertainties will be accounted for in a way that they cannot be today. Impact beyond the UK is assured since there is no equivalent holistic project at this time.