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The influence of the thermal residual stress and reinforcement geometry on the creep behavior of a composite disc has been analyzed in this paper. The creep analysis in a rotating disc made of Al-SiC (particle/whisker) composite having hyperbolically varying thickness has been carried out using anisotropic Hoffman yield criterion and results obtained are compared with those using Hill's criterion ignoring difference in yield stresses. The steady state creep behavior has been described by Sherby's creep law. The creep parameters characterizing difference in yield stresses have been used from the available experimental results in literature. It is observed that the stresses are not much affected by the presence of thermal residual stress, while thermal residual stress introduces significant change in the strain rates in an anisotropic rotating disc. Secondly, it is noticed that the steady state creep rates in whisker reinforced disc with/without residual stress are observed to be significantly lower than those observed in particle reinforced disc with/without residual stress. It is concluded that the presence of residual stress in an anisotropic disc with varying thickness needs attention for designing a disc.

In this paper, an effort has been made to study the effect of anisotropy on the steady state creep behavior in the functionally graded material disc with hyperbolic thickness made of Al-SiC (particle). The content of silicon carbide particles in the disc is assumed to decrease linearly from the inner to the outer radius of the disc. The creep behavior of the disc under stresses developing due to rotation at 15,000 rpm has been determined by Sherby's law. The creep parameters of the FGM disc vary along the radial distance due to varying composition and this variation has been estimated by regression fit of the available experimental data. The creep response of rotating disc is expressed by a threshold stress with value of stress exponent as 8. The study reveals that the anisotropy has a significant effect on the steady state creep response of rotating FGM disc. Thus, the care to introduce anisotropy should be taken for the safe design of the rotating FGM disc with hyperbolic thickness.

Peridynamics theory is a nonlocal meshless method that replaces differential equations with spatial integral equations, and has shown good applicability and reliability in the analysis of discontinuities. Further, with characteristics of clear physical meaning and simple and reliable numerical calculation, the bond-based peridynamics method has been widely applied in the field. However, this method describes the interaction between material points simply using a single elastic “spring”, and thus leads to a fixed Poisson’s ratio, relatively low computational efficiency and other inherent problems. As such, the goal of this review paper is to provide a summary of the various methods of bond-based peridynamics modeling, particularly those that have overcome the limitations of the Poisson’s ratio, considered the shear deformation and modeling of two-dimensional thin plates for bending and three-dimensional anisotropic composites, as well as explored coupling with finite element methods. This review will determine the advantages and disadvantages of such methods and serve as a starting point for researchers in the development of peridynamics theory.

A novel approach to determine the translaminar crack resistance curve of composite laminates by means of a machine learning model is presented in this paper. The main objective of the proposed method is to extract hidden information of crack resistance from strength values of center-cracked laminates. Compared to traditional measurements, the notable advantage is that only tensile strength values are required which can be obtained by a rather simpler experimental procedure. This is achieved by the incorporation of the finite fracture mechanics, which links crack resistance with strength values. In order to get training dataset, a semi-analytical method using both finite element method and finite fracture mechanics is employed to generate strength values of center-cracked specimens with different random R-curves, which serve as inputs for our artificial neural network. Regarding the outputs, principal component analysis is performed to reduce dimensionality and find suitable descriptors for crack resistance curves. After successfully training machine learning model, experimental studies on basalt fiber reinforced laminates are conducted as validation. Results have proven the effectiveness of the proposed strategy for predicting crack resistance curves, as well as the feasibility of using machine learning-based framework to find out more information about composites from simple experimental data.

Composites were prepared with carbon fiber used as the reinforcement. The influence of carbon fiber content and coupling agents on the mechanical properties of the fluorine rubber was studied. Infrared Spectroscopy (IR) showed that C-Si-O bonds were generated in the composites. These improved the compatibility between carbon fiber and fluorine rubber. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) showed that the carbon fiber, treated with KH550, was aligned within the rubber with no obvious sections or pores, indicating a good interphase combination between them. Optimal mechanical properties of the composites were obtained when fluorine rubber had 12 parts per hundred rubber (phr) of chopped carbon fiber.

The purpose of this study is to develop a lightweight design model for an 18ft leisure boat. The existing leisure boat is manufactured using glass fiber-reinforced plastics (GFRP) material and the hand lay-up process. Carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP) was applied to the new design to reduce the boat’s weight, while an automated tape laying machine was applied to the lightweight boat’s manufacturing process to increase boat manufacturing productivity. The newly designed CFRP model is 25% lighter than the existing GFRP model. It was confirmed that the newly designed lightweight hull has sufficient structural integrity compared to the existing hull through the structural integrity evaluation by the FEA.