Strain-based Monitoring of Damage Creation in Heterogeneous Materials

This project is part of a 4-year Dual PhD degree programme between the National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) and the University of Liverpool (England). As part of the NTHU-UoL Dual PhD Award students are in the unique position of being able to gain 2 PhD awards at the end of their degree from two internationally recognised world-leading Universities. As well as benefiting from a rich cultural experience, students can draw on large-scale national facilities of both countries and create a worldwide network of contacts across two continents.

The latest set of projects targeted goal #11 from the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Concern for the climate is leading to changes in the structural materials used throughout engineering. In the aerospace sector, emissions reductions are being achieved through the use of composite materials, meanwhile in construction, consideration of the environmental impact of concrete and steel is leading to a resurgence in the use of natural materials such as timber. In both sectors the common feature is that these structural materials have highly heterogeneous microstructures, which result in complicated damage mechanics that are often difficult to predict. This creates a need for experimental studies of how these materials behave as they are loaded to failure. Over the past decade, optical techniques have become ubiquitous in experimental studies of structural components. These techniques provide a wealth of information, typically in the form of surface strain or stress fields, about how components behave as they are loaded to failure [1]. However, an issue is the amount of data captured often stretches into gigabytes and even terabytes. This presents a bottleneck in the analysis of experimental data and often results in simplistic analysis techniques that only consider the condition of the component at particular locations.

This PhD project will develop and mature a damage monitoring technique that increases the rate at which experimental data can be analysed and improves our understanding of how complicated materials behave during loading. The technique will be applied to data from digital image correlation, an optical method for measuring strain on the surface of components as they are loaded. The research will focus on the behaviour of aerospace composites during impact loading [2] and construction grade timber during tensile and flexural loading to failure [3].

This technique has the potential to improve engineer’s understanding of how materials behave during failure. This will help engineers in the development of structures that are more efficient in their use of materials, leading to reductions in both emissions and material wastage.

For academic enquires please contact [Email Address Removed]
For enquires on the application process or to find out more about the Dual programme please contact School of Engineering Postgraduate Office ([Email Address Removed])

Applicants should apply via the University of Liverpool application form, for a PhD in the subject area listed above via: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/how-to-apply/.