Development of hierarchical reinforcements in bioinspired ceramics
Lead Research Organisation:
Imperial College London
Department Name: Materials
Abstract
Recent advances in processing have open new ways to control the microstructure of strong, stiff and tough ceramics inspired by natural material so that these ceramics can now compete with today's thermostructural materials. The objective of this thesis is to characterize the fracture process of the newly developed materials from the micrometer to the millimetre scale. Based on these results, the next steps will be to rationally design the next generation of bionspired ceramics by adapting further the microstructure to introduce new toughening mechanisms.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Florian Bouville (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Victoria Vilchez (Student) |
| Description | 1 - Our research has highlighted the limitations of the current tools used to evaluate the mechanical properties of complex ceramic composites and proposes a new method that described more accurately how cracks propagate in those materials. This new tool will allow the scientific and engineering communities to better understand damage growth in high performance materials in order to improve the mechanical resistance and lower the risks of catastrophic failure. 2 - We have developed experimental methods to control the structure of bio-inspired composites at the micron scale, as well as data analysis and numerical tools to evaluate how much the architecture of such materials at the micro scale influences their mechanical performance at the macro scale. This will help the scientific community understand how nature has evolved to adapt to its environmental constraints and how R&D can take inspiration from this to design and build more resilient materials and structures. |
| Exploitation Route | The tools we have developed will serve the applied research community on a short term scale, to help reconsider the current procedures used in mechanical testing and further investigate the fracture mechanics of advanced ceramics. On a longer term it will help the engineering field to improve the resilience of materials and structures. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Construction,Energy,Environment,Healthcare,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology |
| Description | New approach to fracture mechanics in ceramics with deflected cracks that complements the current standards of mechanical testing. |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Description | Sample manufacturing during covid-19 resistrictions |
| Organisation | Cardiff University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | Provided the samples in powder form to be sintered. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Sintered the samples using spark plasma sintering. |
| Impact | Cardiff university helped us out when one of our machine was down and could not be fixed because of covid travel restrictions stopping the manufacturer from sending over engineers from Germany. Cardiff university has a similar machine and kindly agreed to sinter some samples for us. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | in situ fracture testing using X-ray tomography |
| Organisation | University of Manchester |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The Centre for Advanced Structural Ceramics at Imperial College manufactured the materials of interest and prepared the samples for mechanical testing. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Philip Withers' group at the university of Manchester helped with the X-ray tomography and application to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. |
| Impact | Accepted proposal at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (doi:10.15151/ESRF-ES-514138902) to conduct in situ fracture tests. The project involves ceramic processing and manufacturing techniques, mechanical testing and tomography imaging techniques. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Title | Composite material made of colloidal silica self-assembled in brick-and-mortar crystals. |
| Description | Silica rods that self-assembled in liquid crystal-like phases are use to replicate the brick-and-mortar architecture of biological materials like nacre. The rods act like bricks and the mortar is a polymer resin that is infiltrated after the colloidal crystal has assembled. |
| Type Of Technology | New Material/Compound |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The self-assembly into organised structures teaches us about how biological materials form and evolve to adapt to their environmental constraints, with a focus on mechanical performance. This will help us understand how it can be transposed to synthetic materials to improve the performance of advanced materials. In addition, the optical properties of colloidal crystals can be exploited to obtain photonic material, by tuning the interactions between the silica rods and the polymer. |
| Description | Postgraduate day in the department of materials |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Presented a poster during to the other researchers and PhD students of the department of materials. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |