The 12th Global Conference on Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE 2023)

Abstract: Debonding and delamination failure are common problems experienced in composite bonded repair and sandwich structures. There is a need to have an effective approach to locally reinforce the repair patch and fully integrate skins with core. A novel stitching technology has emerged for enhancing the load carrying capacity of composite patch repair as well as the bonding behaviour between skins and core for a sandwich structure. In this approach, holes were first drilled through the scarf patch repaired and sandwich core. Then stitching processes were applied to tie the repair patch against the parent laminates and skins with core. The vacuum resin infusion technique was further used to integrate the threads with the sandwich core-skins and fix the patch to the parent part. The stitch‐reinforced scarf patch is to reduce the amount of parent material that is removed during the repair. It has been shown that for a 2.5 mm diameter stitching thread the ultimate tensile strength of the repaired laminates can be enhanced by 50 %. In the stitched foam-core sandwich panels, stitching represents a more balanced technology for improving the flatwise compressive, bending and shear strength as well as delamination resistance properties of sandwich panels. Further, increasing the fiber volume fraction inside the stitching holes is an effective way to improve the out-of-plane mechanical performance.

Biography: Professor Zhongwei Guan is Executive Director of Advanced Materials Research Centre of Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi. He received his first degree on Solid Mechanics in Sichuan University China in 1982 and was awarded PhD on Structural Behaviour of Polymeric Pipelining in University of Bradford UK in 1993. He was Reader in Lightweight Composite Materials and Structures at the University of Liverpool. He has published more than 180 SCI papers in refereed leading international journals on lightweight composite structures subjected to extreme loading conditions such as projectile impact and blast, covering fibre metal laminates, PVC foam-based sandwiches and SLM lattice structures, corrugated sandwiches, timber structures, high temperature TP prepreg, etc. Prof Guan is ranked as world top 2 % scientists by Stanford University. He was Chairman of the 5th International Conference on Computational Methods held in Cambridge in 2014. He is a member of editorial board of International Journal of Impact Engineering, Applied Composite Materials and Advanced Materials Letter. He also serves as a scientific committee member of more than 20 international conferences and has given more than 25 keynotes, thematic and plenary speeches.