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Science and Engineering of Advanced Composites (SEAC)

The SEAC research project is an industry lead research programme carried out in conjunction with Henkel, Bombardier and EireComposite and also sponsored by Enterprise Ireland. The project has three main research areas;

  • The first research area is the characterisation of a various composite joint systems. Two composite substrates were treated with different commercially available peel plies and bonded with liquid shim adhesives. The joints were evaluated using the double cantilever beam (DCB) test specimen. It has been shown that the fracture toughness, locus of failure and type of failure (i.e. stable, stick-slip) is highly dependent on the substrate/peel ply/adhesives combination (see Figure 1).
  • The second research area involves the effect of plasma treatments on the composite substrate. The work is divided into surface activation prior to adhesive bonding and also the use of plasma in contamination removal. Initial results have shown that a plasma treatment can improve the fracture toughness of different peel ply prepared substrats and also change the locus of failure from adhesive to cohesive. Plasma treatments have also shown promise in removal of mould release agents from glass slide. Future work will now focus on removal of contaminants from composite substrats.
  • The third involves the numerical modelling of the composite joint systems using a finite volume method. Current research at UCD has shown the fracture toughness of adhesive joints to be dependent on the level of constraint in the bondline. Numerical modelling is essential in understanding this effect.

Sponsors:

Collaborators:

  • UCD Surface Engineering Group - website

Contact details: