Xiangfa Wu

Fracture of Advanced Composites with Nanofiber Reinforced Interfaces: Fabrication, Characterization and Modeling Xiangfa Wu

Advanced polymer composites have being found increasing use in a wide variety of load-carrying structural applications where their specific strength and stiffness plays a crucial role. One of the major problems with these materials is their poor resistance to delamination, particularly the free-edge and impact-induced delamination. Various designs to improve delamination resistance resulted in considerable weight and cost penalties. A novel delamination suppression concept was proposed recently based on nanofiber reinforcement of interfaces between plies in advanced laminated composites (Dzenis and Reneker, 2001). As one of the contributors to this research, the author's study focused on the comprehensive experimental and theoretical analysis of edge effects in these novel composites, analysis of rate effects on their interlaminar fracture, development of methods and experimental characterization of their dynamic/impact fracture, and development of new crack models for thin layers and composite laminates. This monograph is the summary of the author¿s work in this study.