Browsing by Author "Hughes, Darren J."

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    Investigation of adhesive joining strategies for the application of a multi-material light rail vehicle
    (MDPI, 2021-11-18) Liu, Yiding; Carnegie, Craig; Ascroft, Helen; Li, Wenhao; Han, Xiao; Guo, Hua; Hughes, Darren J.
    To meet the high demand for lightweight energy-efficient and safe structures for transport applications, a current state-of-the-art light rail vehicle structure is under development that adopts a multi-material design strategy. This strategy creates the need for advanced multi-material joining technologies. The compatibility of the adhesive with a wide range of material types and the possibility of joining multi-material structures is also a key advantage to its success. In this paper, the feasibility of using either epoxy or polyurethane adhesive joining techniques applied to the multi-material vehicle structure is investigated. Importantly, consideration is given to the effect of variation in bond thickness for both families of structural adhesives. Multi-material adhesively bonded single lap joints with different adhesives of controlled bond thicknesses were manufactured and tested in order to experimentally assess the shear strength and stiffness. The torsional stiffness and natural frequency of the vehicle were modelled using a global two-dimensional finite element model (FEM) with different adhesive properties, and the obtained vehicle performances were further explained by the coupon-level experimental tests. The results showed that the vehicle using polyurethane adhesive with a target bond thickness of 1.0 mm allowed for optimal modal frequency and weight reduction.
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    Structure health monitoring of composites joint reinforced by acoustic emission based smart composite fasteners
    (Elsevier, 2022-06-16) Li, Wenhao; Guo, Shijun; Liu, Yiding; Shen, Zhengquan; Xiong, Yi; Gao, Fei; Hughes, Darren J.; Lin, Jing
    This paper proposed an Acoustic Emission (AE) based Smart Composite Fastener (SCF) concept for health monitoring of bonded/bolted composite single lap joints. The SCF was made of 3D-printed continuous carbon fibre reinforced thermoplastic materials with an embedded piezoelectric sensor. The SCF detected signals were found to be successfully associated with AE damage sources during the loading period. It was discovered that the adhesive crack/delamination AE sources resulted in burst-type signals with identifiable onset and end, whereas AE sources of frictional sliding between the SCF and fastener holes resulted in continuous-type signals producing broad frequency content. Furthermore, the amplitudes of the burst-type signal measured from the network of SCFs were successfully correlated with the locations of the damages. In the direction away from the damage, the amplitudes of the burst-type voltages measured from the SCF showed a decreasing trend, with 10195mv, 9,995mv, and 7,426mv respectively. Generally, the research in this paper explores the correlation between the voltage signal from a damaged AE source and the SCF, providing the feasibility of using a novel SCF for health monitoring in composite joint structures.