Developing better materials for everyday life
The increased demand for specialised products and technologies is driving manufacturing innovation and the development of new advanced materials. Many objects in our everyday life have been transformed—and in most cases—improved by the application of advanced materials like metals, ceramics, gels, polymers and composites. The benefits come not only from greater quantities of existing materials at reduced costs but also from the development of materials with totally new properties that enhance safety and sustainability. These new materials outperform conventional ones as they have properties that improve toughness and durability.
To ensure that the engineering structures made of these materials can perform as required, they need to be tested under dynamic loading conditions to see how they behave. Whether it’s a mobile phone dropping onto a hard surface, a car crashing into a brick wall, a bullet striking an armour plate, or even a meteorite crashing to Earth, impact dynamics investigates collisions and how materials and structures perform and function when subjected to a range of extreme loading conditions.
Associated schools, institutes & centres
Impact
Using a synergy of our expertise regarding advanced materials and of their behaviour under dynamic impact loading conditions we focus on developing resilient materials and structures for engineering applications. Using experimental investigation, we test materials over a wide spectrum of strain rates ranging from 10-3 to 107 s-1.
Our areas of expertise cover the study of advanced composite materials across:
- aerospace structures
- automotive
- civil infrastructure
- defence
- oil and gas industries
- marine industries.
Our research works to:
- maximise survivability by developing new protective structures for Defence to improve the performance of lightweight armour systems in defending against attacks from shape charged weapon systems and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
- minimise the weight burden on the soldier by developing lightweight durable structures.
- reduce injury by developing a better understanding of the behaviour of the human body to dynamic loading and ballistic impacts.
Competitive advantage
- Advanced material manufacturing and testing capabilities.
- The fastest gun in the Southern Hemisphere. A two-stage gun able to fire projectile packages to 4.5 km/s.
- Split-Hopkinson-Pressure-Bar for compression and tensile analysis.
- Instrumented Drop Tower.
- High-speed diagnostic capabilities.
- Ability to combine high strain-rate testing with computational expertise.
- Recognition of our expertise in advanced engineering simulations including blast and impact.
- Composite manufacturing.
- FEM (composites, structures, fluid-structure interface).
- Computational mechanics (nonlinear numerical, thermal and thermal-mechanical, progressive damage analyses).
- Repair, design and application.
- Renovation and rehabilitation of engineering structures.
- Joint design and analysis.
- High temperature structural applications.
- Composite steel-concrete structures.
- Mechanical characterisation and experimental diagnostics of polymer and metal matrix composites.
- Fracture and fatigue testing.
- Durability of composite materials (stress corrosion of glass fibres).
- Impact testing.
- Non-destructive inspection of composites (NDI).
- Nano-particulate metal matrix composites.
Successful applications
- Supporting Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) in their quest to understand the mechanical behaviour of a range of Defence materials at various strain rates.
- Development of new resilient structures using advanced protective systems and new materials (High strength steel, Polymers, Ceramics, Auxetics, Fabrics).
- Probing the ballistic performance of a new fast-jet bunker design.
- Development of constitutive models for armour materials.
- Understanding the role of a bullet’s jacket during the penetration of hard targets.
- Design and analysis of composite anisogrid lattice structures for aerospace applications.
- Additive manufacturing of layered functionally graded metal matrix composites (jointly with CSIRO).
- Design and analysis of reinforced thermoplastic pipes for offshore oil and gas applications.
- Development of validated numerical platforms and FEA codes, providing a wide range of consultation.
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Fernando PLN; Mohotti D; Remennikov A; Hazell PJ; Wang H; Amin A, 2020, 'Experimental, numerical and analytical study on the shock wave propagation through impedance-graded multi-metallic systems', International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, vol. 178, pp. 105621 - 105621
Kader MA; Hazell PJ; Brown AD; Tahtali M; Ahmed S; Escobedo JP; Saadatfar M, 2020, 'Novel design of closed-cell foam structures for property enhancement', Additive Manufacturing, vol. 31
Kader MA; Brown AD; Hazell PJ; Robins V; Escobedo JP; Saadatfar M, 2020, 'Geometrical and topological evolution of a closed-cell aluminium foam subject to drop-weight impact: An X-ray tomography study', International Journal of Impact Engineering, vol. 139
Lopatin AV; Morozov EV, 2020, 'Buckling of a rectangular composite orthotropic plate with two parallel free edges and the other two edges clamped and subjected to uniaxial compressive distributed load', European Journal of Mechanics, A/Solids, vol. 81
Aryal B; Morozov EV; Shankar K, 2020, 'Effects of ballistic impact damage on mechanical behaviour of composite honeycomb sandwich panels', Journal of Sandwich Structures and Materials, pp. 109963622090974 - 109963622090974
Wang C; Ramakrishnan KR; Shankar K; Morozov E; Wang H; Fien A, 2020, 'Homogenized shell element-based modeling of low-velocity impact response of stainless-steel wire mesh', Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, pp. 1 - 16
Aryal B; Morozov EV; Wang H; Shankar K; Hazell PJ; Escobedo-Diaz JP, 2019, 'Effects of impact energy, velocity, and impactor mass on the damage induced in composite laminates and sandwich panels', Composite Structures, vol. 226
- Li Z; Ameri AAH; Hazell PJ; Khennane A; Escobedo-Diaz JP; Aryal B; Wang H, 2021, 'Effects of impactor mass on the low-velocity impact behaviour of thick GFRP pultruded laminates', Construction and Building Materials, vol. 279
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Our research topics and projects include the development of new structural design and analysis methods, experimental characterisation of new materials, studies of structural performance, and manufacturing effects. Research projects include:
- Buckling of sandwich panels with laminated facings and compressible core.
- Dynamic response and progressive failure of composite structures.
- Design and modal analysis of deployable space structural components.
- Vibration-based delamination detection in composite beams through frequency changes.
- Impact and dynamic testing of composites.
- Bond behaviour of geopolymer concrete and FRP bars.
- Experimental and computational study of ultra-high temperature ceramics (carbides, nitrides and borides) with applications to the development of optical devices.
Undergraduate research projects
- Influence of a steel strike face on an Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene hybrid composite.
- The effect of contamination on the integrity and durability of composite adhesive bonds.
- Photopolymer Resin Extrusion 3D Printer.
- Material characterisation of LENS 3D printed titanium metal matrix composite using sub size testing samples.
- Investigating the validity of utilising in-situ destructive testing to determine the mechanical property of a hybrid metal-composite under the influence of debonding or delamination.
- Evaluating the structural response of carbon fibre reinforced polymer sandwich panels subjected to low velocity impacts.
- Damage characterisation of thick composite laminates subjected to in-plane impact.
- Fabrication and material characterisation of thermoplastic UHMWPE/HDPE composites.
- Low velocity impact performance of honeycomb sandwich panels with carbon fibre/aluminium laminate face sheets.
- Surface preparation and the contamination effects on composite adhesive bonds.
- Characterisation of a flax fabric/bio-epoxy composites.
Postgraduate research projects
- Ballistic response of CFRP sandwich panels.
- Impact behaviour of UHMWPE woven fabrics and fabric-reinforced composite laminates.
- Structural design methodology for composite wind turbine blades.
- Progressive damage modelling and crash simulation for laminated composite structures.
- Study of bond behaviour between glass fibre reinforced polymer bars and fly-ash based geopolymer concrete.
- Impact behaviour of hybrid GFRP-concrete beam under low-velocity impact loading.
- Improving thermo-mechanical characteristics of a 3D printable materials for small-satellite applications.
