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Civil infrastructures are susceptible to damage under the events of natural or manmade disasters. Over the last two decades, the use of emerging engineering materials, such as the fiber-reinforced plastics (FRPs), in structural retrofitting have gained significant popularity. However, due to their inherent brittleness and lack of energy dissipation, undesirable

Civil infrastructures are susceptible to damage under the events of natural or manmade disasters. Over the last two decades, the use of emerging engineering materials, such as the fiber-reinforced plastics (FRPs), in structural retrofitting have gained significant popularity. However, due to their inherent brittleness and lack of energy dissipation, undesirable failure modes of the FRP-retrofitted systems, such as sudden laminate fracture and debonding, have been frequently observed. In this light, a Carbon-fiber reinforced Hybrid-polymeric Matrix Composite (or CHMC) was developed to provide a superior, yet affordable, solution for infrastructure damage mitigation and protection. The microstructural and micromechanical characteristics of the CHMC was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and nanoindentation technique. The mechanical performance, such as damping, was identified using free and forced vibration tests. A simplified analytical model based on micromechanics was developed to predict the laminate stiffness using the modulus profile tested by the nanoindentation. The prediction results were verified by the flexural modulus calculated from the vibration tests. The feasibility of using CHMC to retrofit damaged structural systems was investigated via a series of structural component level tests. The effectiveness of using CHMC versus conventional carbon-fiber reinforced epoxy (CF/ epoxy) to retrofit notch damaged steel beams were tested. The comparison of the test results indicated the superior deformation capacity of the CHMC retrofitted beams. The full field strain distributions near the critical notch tip region were experimentally determined by the digital imaging correlation (DIC), and the results matched well with the finite element analysis (FEA) results. In the second series of tests, the application of CHMC was expanded to retrofit the full-scale fatigue-damaged concrete-encased steel (or SRC) girders. Similar to the notched steel beam tests, the CHMC retrofitted SRC girders exhibited substantially better post-peak load ductility than that of CF/ epoxy retrofitted girder. Lastly, a quasi-static push over test on the CHMC retrofitted reinforced concrete shear wall further highlighted the CHMC's capability of enhancing the deformation and energy dissipating potential of the damaged civil infrastructure systems. Analytical and numerical models were developed to assist the retrofitting design using the newly developed CHMC material.
ContributorsZhou, Hongyu (Author) / Attard, Thomas L (Thesis advisor) / Fafitis, Apostolos (Thesis advisor) / Mignolet, Marc P (Committee member) / Ariaratnam, Samuel (Committee member) / Thomas, Benjamin (Committee member) / Blumsom, Jim (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Damage and failure of advanced composite materials and structures are often manifestations of nonlinear deformation that involve multiple mechanisms and their interactions at the constituent length scale. The presence and interactions of inelastic microscale constituents strongly influence the macroscopic damage anisotropy and useful residual life. The mechano-chemical interactions between constituents

Damage and failure of advanced composite materials and structures are often manifestations of nonlinear deformation that involve multiple mechanisms and their interactions at the constituent length scale. The presence and interactions of inelastic microscale constituents strongly influence the macroscopic damage anisotropy and useful residual life. The mechano-chemical interactions between constituents at the atomistic length scale play a more critical role with nanoengineered composites. Therefore, it is desirable to link composite behavior to specific microscopic constituent properties explicitly and lower length scale features using high-fidelity multiscale modeling techniques.In the research presented in this dissertation, an atomistically-informed multiscale modeling framework is developed to investigate damage evolution and failure in composites with radially-grown carbon nanotube (CNT) architecture. A continuum damage mechanics (CDM) model for the radially-grown CNT interphase region is developed with evolution equations derived using atomistic simulations. The developed model is integrated within a high-fidelity generalized method of cells (HFGMC) micromechanics theory and is used to parametrically investigate the influence of various input micro and nanoscale parameters on the mechanical properties, such as elastic stiffness, strength, and toughness. In addition, the inter-fiber stresses and the onset of damage in the presence of the interphase region are investigated to better understand the energy dissipation mechanisms that attribute to the enhancement in the macroscopic out-of-plane strength and toughness. Note that the HFGMC theory relies heavily on the description of microscale features and requires many internal variables, leading to high computational costs. Therefore, a novel reduced-order model (ROM) is also developed to surrogate full-field nonlinear HFGMC simulations and decrease the computational time and memory requirements of concurrent multiscale simulations significantly. The accurate prediction of composite sandwich materials' thermal stability and durability remains a challenge due to the variability of thermal-related material coefficients at different temperatures and the extensive use of bonded fittings. Consequently, the dissertation also investigates the thermomechanical performance of a complex composite sandwich space structure subject to thermal cycling. Computational finite element (FE) simulations are used to investigate the intrinsic failure mechanisms and damage precursors in honeycomb core composite sandwich structures with adhesively bonded fittings.
ContributorsVenkatesan, Karthik Rajan (Author) / Chattopadhyay, Aditi (Thesis advisor) / Liu, Yongming (Committee member) / Jiao, Yang (Committee member) / Yekani Fard, Masoud (Committee member) / Stoumbos, Tom (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021