Aerospace Engineering: Fully Funded Embraer Aircraft PhD Scholarship: Stochastic Multiscale Methods for Failure Quantification in Advanced Composite Structures: Top-down Approach

This scholarship is funded by Embraer Aircraft.

Start date: October 2019

Advanced composite materials are being used to an increasing degree in primary aerospace structures due to a number of useful attributes such as high specific strength and stiffness, and material anisotropy which may be exploited to tailor structural properties. Material properties are typically not homogeneous and can vary randomly within large structures such as wing and fuselage.

The subject of this project is to consider the impact of uncertainties on the design and analysis of composite structures considering failure mechanism at different length scales. The type of questions addressed include how to:

develop new uncertainty models which can accurately propagate the loading-uncertainty from models of a structure at a higher-scale to a lower-scale. The scales of interest include the typical levels in the building-block pyramid: aircraft, wing, panel, reinforced element, laminate, lamina, bond line and constituents (micro-scale).
formulate advanced techniques for identifying uncertainty models at a lower-scale given experimental results of tests at a higher-scale, e.g. identify a stochastic model of constituent-level failure parameters which best match the statistical distribution of experimental results in coupon-level tests.
assist in the definition of novel experimental procedures which are most suited to tune the statistical models of lower-scale properties.
explore the adequacy of using tuned multi-scale models to predict the failure probability of assemblies with failure mechanisms that are of a different nature from available experiments. e.g. can a micro-level failure criterion identified using open hole tests be applied to predict the delamination failure of a panel due to impact?
This project will look into a top-down approach for the stochastic multiscale analysis of composite structures.

The project is funded by Embraer Aircraft (Brazil) and linked to current research activities with the Aerospace Structures group. The student will be expected to spend some time at the main Embraer aircraft manufacturing and design facility in Sao Jose Dos Campos in Brazil. The visits to Brazil will be fully funded by the project. The student will be supervised by Professor Sondipon Adhikari and another second supervisor from the College of Engineering.

Eligibility
Applicants should have an MEng or equivalent in aerospace engineering. Some knowledge of aeroelasticity and experience in the aerospace industry would be desirable.

We would normally expect the academic and English Language requirements to be met by point of application. For details on the University’s English Language entry requirements, please visit – http://www.swansea.ac.uk/admissions/englishlanguagerequirements/

Due to funding restrictions, this scholarship is open to UK/EU candidates only.