Sain and Imam Publish on Composite Materials

Solids and Structures journal coverTrisha Sain (ME-EM) and Muhammed Imam authored the paper “Effects of cohesive interfaces and polymer viscoelasticity on improving mechanical properties in an architectured composite,” in the International Journal of Solids and Structures.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsolstr.2018.10.008

Extract

Improving the functionality of composite materials is a key requirement for various aerospace, auto-motive, sports and defense applications. The trend is to identify mechanisms, design, constituents, and, preferably, the combination of all of them that can result into better mechanical properties in the conflicting domain of interest (e.g. high stiffness and high damping or high stiffness and high toughness) without adding much complexity in the analysis and design.

The present work considered an “interconnected” geometry inspired by biological materials in a composite material made of very different material properties. Our computational study showed that the interconnection was effective in improving the load transfer between two dissimilar materials by the virtue of contact-friction mechanism, compared to layered materials.