Hierarchically Assembled Self-Healing Material

The objective of this proposal is to investigate the feasibility of hierarchical assembly to develop microstructures composed of piezoelectric and polymeric components and create macroscale high strength adaptive materials. The materials developed in this effort will change their microstructures in response to a variety of loading conditions and/or external signals and in addition demonstrate autonomous self-healing. The microstructure of the material will be optimized by hierarchical structuring that will provide the material with unique capacity to adapt to various loading rates. This material developed by the team of Astro Terra Corp , Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia Tech is referred to as Adaptive Self-Healing Intelligent Elastic Deformable (Adaptive SHIELD) composite and will be designed for aerospace, military and naval applications. The microstructure of this material will be realized through the combination of nanopatterning, chemical synthesis and melt pressing and this Phase-I effort will focus on the feasibility for fabricating this material. The proposed techniques combine chemical synthesis with hierarchical assembly and will be referred to as Hierarchical Combinatorial Technique (HCT).