Civil Engineering CE 5990 Graduate Seminar
Thursday, February 2
Time: 4-5pm,
Dow 642
Presenter: Dr. Gregory M. Odegard, Associate Professor, ME-EM, Michigan Tech
Abstract: Polymer-based composites and nanocomposite materials have the potential to provide significant increases in specific stiffness and specific strength relative to current Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Structures and Materials Technical Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.significant increases in specific stiffness and specific strength relative to current materials used for many engineering structural applications. To facilitate the design and development of polymer nanocomposite materials, structure-property relationships must be established that predict the bulk mechanical response of these materials as a function of the molecular- and micro-structure. The objective of this research is to establish an accurate and efficient approach for using computational modeling to develop structure-property relationships for polymer-based systems. A combination of molecular dynamics and micromechanical modeling methods has been used to predict the mechanical response of high-performance polymers, nanoparticle/polymer composites, SWNT/polymer composites, and SWNT arrays. An overview of this research will be presented along with the results from specific material systems.