Author: vmalapak

The next generation of overhead conductors for electrical will consist of aluminum wires wrapped around a solid composite rod, rather than a conventional steel cable. The…

High-modulus and high-strength glass (E.g. S2-glass) and polymeric materials such as aramids (E.g. Kevlar) are used in armor applications in the form of woven fabrics and…

Project Title: Design for and Analytic Modeling of Acoustic Performance of Sandwich Structures Student Researcher: Bill Edwards Summary: Sandwich panels–made up of two thin facesheets…

The emergence of polymer nanocomposites began with the discovery at Toyota in the 1980’s that small additions of nanoclay to nylon-6 resulted in dramatic increases…

Steel syntactic foam offers potential advantages over aluminum foams and other metallic foams. The inherent strength of steel combined with the reduced density of foam…

Grain refinement is a well-established means of strengthening metallic alloys, and is expressed in the well-known Hall-Petch relation. In the past decade, severe plastic deformation (SPD)…

The commercial aircraft industry is increasing their reliance on composite materials to produce lighter, more durable aircraft. For instance, both Boeing and Airbus are presently…

Currently, out-of-autoclave processing tends to refer to vacuum bag-only cure in conventional, ambient pressure ovens. However, while ovens drastically reduce the acquisition and operation costs…

Out-of-autoclave/vacuum bag-only (OOA/VBO) prepregs initially feature dry areas that allow air evacuation at room temperature, and are infiltrated with surrounding resin during cure. These phenomena,…

Student Researcher(s): Stephanie Klimczak, Vivian Tsui   Summary: Traditional composite manufacturing methods required high pressure autoclaves to achieve high quality parts. Recently, however, equivalent parts…