Self-Tuning Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Adaptive Nanocomposite (STRAINcomp)

Self-Tuning Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Adaptive Nanocomposite (STRAINcomp) will provide a state-of-the-art, swift, reversible and process-efficient material and technology in response to varying operating loads, an innovative scientific answer to the rate dependence challenge with a novel integrated material development. It proposes one small step towards a giant leap for development of smart critical structures equipped with self-regulate micro-mechanisms.
STRAINcomp is mainly aligned with the EPSRC's Engineering and Manufacturing the Future themes, in the areas of Materials engineering - composites and Manufacturing technologies which have been identified as areas to maintain by the EPSRC as well as including priority areas of Engineering Sciences, Functional Materials and Polymer Science. It is inherently multidisciplinary, and directly targets novel, innovative and disruptive technology of self-tuning high performance composite material for UK and global composites sectors. This will bring a novel material development that will put the UK position ahead of the global pioneering innovations and market.
The UK sectors including aerospace (e.g. fuselage and wing structures), renewable energy (e.g. wind and tidal turbine blades and cowlings), automotive (e.g. composite panels, chassis, bumpers), civil (e.g. bridge beams, lamp-posts, road furniture), rail (e.g. composite carriages), marine (e.g. boat hulls and masts) and high-end sports equipment markets urgently require toughening solutions. There are many established polymer composites businesses and fast growing sectors in UK (e.g. Composite Reinforcements UK, Bombardier, Cambridge Nanosystems, Hexcel, Munro Technology etc.). These companies will directly benefit from the outputs of this project.

The technology proposed by STRAINcomp will be applicable to a variety of research communities, scientists, educators, students and composite industries from the highly conservative aviation to automotive and renewable energy sectors as well as biomedical sector. STRAINcomp will also have indirect impacts on reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions during the manufacturing process through the use of less carbon fibres, or microwave and radio frequency rapid heating technologies. The PI has microwave curing experience with his former projects of Dielectric Activated Resin Cure for Composite Repair (Institutional grant funded at Cranfield) as PI and Fastener-less Joining Technologies for High Performance Hybrid Composites (Science Foundation Ireland funded at Irish Centre for Composites Research) as project manager and research fellow. This experience can take the outcomes of this project further that composites processing will be beneficial from. Developed in-situ measurement and strain sensor technologies via dielectric constant measurements can also be influenced post-project. That can open up opportunities for non-destructive dielectric measurement of defects in structure.

The major impact of this project will be to inform development practice by improving the scientific understanding of micro-toughening mechanism in the presence of nanomaterials so as to provide researchers, designers and manufacturers with the confidence to invest in this multi-disciplinary efficient technology and thereby improve materials and structures sustainability. Dielectric multifunctional composites are multi-purpose materials used in high performacne structures for conductivity (e.g. microelectronics), rapid processing (e.g. microwave curing), electromagnetic shielding (e.g. military aircrafts), energy storage and recently for dissassembly purpose (e.g. fastener-less technology in www.falcom.ie) but there is no robust practical evidence to demonstrate their ability for smart toughening by cost-effective process and property tailoring proposed by STRAINcomp. By providing the evidence base for cost-effective lightweight technologies, STRAINcomp can stretch
further towards low income companies as well as critical highly certification driven sectors such as aerospace and defence, and towards other multifunctional sectors such as biomedical devices, and/or communities will be able to afford to invest in improving their own multifunctional products, and realise the benefits.
These benefits include less time, cost and energy spent. STRAINcomp material can be tailored in such way to process with efficient low-cost processing technique, and provides an acquired-on-demand self-tuning technology which, with lowest interference with the structural integrity maintining nominal properties, significantly reduces the energy required for toughening. Designers can satisfy requirements at both static and dynamic operating conditions with directional properties that STRAINcomp proposes, and hence use less complex geometric features, materials and assembly procedures. Further continuation of STRAINcomp can lead to rapid processing using uniform electromagnetic radiation as dielectric nanomaterials can efficiently absorb radiation which in return heat up their surrounding polymer uniformly. The impact on cost-effectiveness and eco-friendliness will be substantial as the time and energy required for fabrication of STRAINcomp will be significantly reduced. This will ultimately lead to highly sustainable product, process and environements.

It is estimated that due to the multi-disciplinary nature of STRAINcomp the ultimate result is that almost all composite sectors will be benefited. This will make highly competitive composite market and will lead to cheap products so public will directly be benefited, but the impact on the environment and energy consumption will be minimal.