Theme 1: Bioinspired Structural Materials by Design
Developing strong, tough, and impact-resistant structural materials has always been of critical importance in many engineering disciplines. Recent advancements in material and manufacturing engineering have enabled the development of nanotechnological building blocks with excellent properties, which can be integrated into next-generation structural materials. However, how to design the structure or architecture for optimal performance remains a challenge. On the other hand, the natural world contains an arsenal of materials with excellent properties. These emergent superior properties are encoded in the intricate and sophisticated hierarchical structures, which offer unparalleled solutions towards high-performance material designs. Our research aims to develop and design advanced structural materials by drawing inspirations from various biological materials.
Research Objectives:
- Understand the effect of nanoscale structure and interfaces on mechanical properties of architected materials
- Understand how multilevel hierarchical structure optimize the material properties
- Inform bottom-up design strategies to be used in advanced manufacturing methods
Theme 2: Interphase Modeling and Design for Composites and Nanocomposites
Accurately representing and considering the interphase region is usually critical for predicting the properties of the composites and nanocomposites, especially the failure strengths and failure mechanisms. The importance of the interphase region becomes greater when the reinforcements decrease to nanoscale size, as the interphase achieves comparable sizes with these fillers and its properties highly depend on the local heterogeneous environment. Our research aims to develop state of the art multiscale computational models by capturing the local heterogeneous features of the interphase region and investigate their influence on the mechanical properties of the composites and nanocomposites, and finally come up with superior design strategies for the interphase as well as matrix and fillers in different systems.
Research Objectives:
- Develop realistic computational models for interphases in different types of composites and nanocomposites
- Investigate common and uncommon effects of interphases on the mechanical and failure properties of different material systems
- Inform better strategies for interphase engineering and composites design
