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structures and materials |
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contentsdepartment
of aerospace engineering
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activitiesResearch interests focus on the design of laminated
composite materials, including the characterisation and behaviour of
structural laminates, particularly with respect to buckling and vibration
response. Recent research on the characterisation of stacking
sequences for laminated composite materials has given rise to a new class of
laminate in which only in-plane coupling behaviour is present, i.e.
shear-extension coupling. Such laminates produce bend-twist coupling in
wing-box type structures, which is exploited to great effect in the design
for passive load alleviation in wind-turbine blades, or for aero-elastic
compliance in helicopter rotor-blades and forward swept wings. This behaviour
can also be achieved by the use of unbalanced angle-ply laminates or by using
off-axis material alignment, but more complex forms of coupling behaviour
exist in these cases, which lead to detrimental effects on stiffness and
strength. Current research is focused on a unified approach to the
characterization of coupled laminated composites including: algorithm
development for identification and characterization of definitive listings of
coupled laminate stacking sequence configurations, the vast majority
possessing unique forms of coupling behaviour not previously identified in
the literature; critical assessments of the benefits, or otherwise, to a wide
range of functional and/or structural material applications and; development
of laminate benchmark configurations, with extensionally isotropic or fully
isotropic properties exhibiting behaviour similar to conventional (metallic)
materials, against which all unique forms of laminate behaviour, arising from
isolated and combined coupling effects, will be characterized. |
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page editor: c.york@aero.gla.ac.uk Telephone: (+44) 141 330 4345 |
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