[Composite Series 3] A critical and rational review of damage and failure theories

Date:2016/5/2 Visits: 1149

 Prof. Shuguang  Li

Professor of Aerospace Composites, Faculty of Engineering

The University of Nottingham , UK

 

Time：2:00 PM  2^nd May，2016  

Address：Room 326, Cao Building, Yuquan Campus

Inviter：Prof. Hua-xin Peng

 

Prof. Shuguang Li is a Professor of Aerospace Composites, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, UK. Research interests include composite materials and structures, damage and failure of composite materials, impact properties of composite materials, space structure design, finite element analysis, micromechanical structures, large deformation analysis, design and analysis of pressure vessel and shell structure i.e.. 
  

Summary

Theories for damage and failure of fibre reinforced composites are of such a rich abundancy that users are often led to a desperate state of confusion when they have to select appropriate theories for their specific applications.  The series of World Wide Failure Exercises (WWFEs) have made significant contributions to the clarification of the position, where a wide range of popular theories have been subjected to critical reviews based primarily on comparisons with a large but still limited number of experimental data.  However, there has been lack of a systematic review of the rationality of these theories.  The lecture is to make an attempt along this line. 
  

Rationality of a theory is about the mathematical and physical logic underlying the theory, not so much about the closeness of their comparisons with experimental data.  Seeking for close comparisons with a set of experimental data before obtaining a basic level of rationality is not a scientific attitude, although the practice is becoming the norm in the community of science and engineering.  An irrational theory can never be a sound one no matter how closely it compares with experimental data in one respect or another, as it will never be able to compare well with experiments in all respects.  Usually, a good comparison in one respect is at the price of bad ones in some other respects, either unknown for the time being or hidden deliberately. 
 

In the lecture, a number of typical and popular theories of damage and failure of fibre reinforced composites will be critically reviewed in terms of their rationality.  The objective of the lecture is to raise users’ aware of rationality of existing theories so that the users can be informed when select appropriate theories for their applications in future.  For researchers formulating new theories, the lecture is to help them prevent illogical considerations from being incorporated in the theories they are developing.

  

InCSI Special Composites Seminar (No.3)