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goals and ReseaRch Plan
Goals
The main quantitative goals of the Centre are as follows:
Industrial:
1) To develop methods and tools for credible
advanced structural analysis at the user partners. 2) To
ensure transfer of technology across business sectors. 3) To
implement the developed technology of the user partners. 4) To
facilitate employment of post docs, MSc and PhD candidates at
the user partners to strengthen the industrial implementation.
Academic:
1) To graduate 20 PhD candidates and employ 5
post docs. 2) To graduate 100-150 MSc students. 3) To attract
10 foreign professors/scientists to the Centre. 4) To publish
100-150 papers in international peer-reviewed journals in
addition to conference papers. 5) To arrange two international
conferences.
Media:
1) To implement a strategy for popular science
presentations of the research activities in magazines,
newspapers, on television, radio and the web. 2) To establish
a media strategy where the female researchers are made
particularly visible in order to recruit female PhDs and post
docs and contribute to a more even gender balance in this
research field.
Research questions
Discussions with the partners have revealed that more
extensive use of advanced numerical simulations will
improve their competiveness in making cost-effective, safe
and environmentally friendly structures and products. This
industrial need is the basis for the three research questions
defined as the point-of-departure for the research activities
at CASA. The research questions encompass the entire first
five-year period as well as the possible subsequent three-year
period for the Centre. However, additional research questions
may emerge in the later phases of the Centre.
RQ1:
How can we establish accurate, efficient and robust
constitutive models based on the chemical composition,
microstructure and thermo-mechanical processing of a
material?
RQ2:
How can we apply knowledge of material, geometry
and joining technology to obtain optimal behaviour of hybrid
structures for given load situations?
RQ3:
How can we describe the interaction between the load
and the deformable structure under extreme loading scenarios?
Motivated by these research questions, five basic research
programmes are defined in order to increase the prediction
accuracy of numerical simulations.
Lower Scale:
This programme concentrates on the lower
length scales of materials, from atomic up to the micrometre
scale, and will provide experimental and modelling input to the
multiscale framework from the lower scale.
Metallic Materials:
This will develop a physically based
and experimentally validated multiscale framework providing
constitutive models for crystal plasticity, continuum plasticity,
damage and fracture of metallic materials. The main emphasis
will be on aluminium alloys and steels.
In many critical structural applications, material properties
beyond standard testing conditions are required; hence high
and low temperatures, high pressures (from blast waves or
water depths) and elevated rates of strain (including shock
loading) will be given special attention.
Polymeric Materials:
This will develop and improve material
models representing the thermo-mechanical response up
to fracture for polymers, i.e. thermoplastics with or without
fibre reinforcement, foams and elastomers. The models will be
developed for application in an industrial context. Particular
attention is paid to validation and efficient identification of the
parameters involved in the models.
Structural Joints:
This will provide validated computational
models for multi-material joints applicable in large-scale
finite element analyses. The scope is limited to the behaviour
and modelling of structural joints made with screws, adhesive
bonding and self-piercing rivets - as well as their possible
combinations. The considered materials are steel, aluminium
and reinforced polymers.
Structures:
This will develop advanced computational tools
and establish validated modelling guidelines for computer-
aided design of safer and more cost-effective structures.
Another objective will be to replace phenomenological models
with physical models in a top-down/bottom-up multiscale
modelling approach in order to reduce the number of
mechanical tests as much as possible in the design phase. With
respect to protective structures, the emphasis in this research
programme will not be on traditional fortification installations,
but on innovative lightweight and hybrid structures to meet
the future needs of the user partners. Actual materials are
those typically used in protective structures such as steel,
aluminium, polymers, glass, foams, ceramics and concrete.
GOALS AND RESEARCH PLAN