Structural Integrity of Intelligent Materials and Structures

Intelligent materials open new avenues to improve performance, reliability and longevity of future aerospace vehicle structures by allowing the structural materials themselves to become active elements for multiple system functions. However, the application of intelligent materials and structures has been inhibited because the effects of microstructural interactions between intelligent and host material elements have not yet been well characterized. The objective of the proposed research is to develop predictive models of these local phenomena to enable analytical assessment of their effects on material and structural integrity. The research plan involves: (1) extension of existing micromechanical models of composite material behavior to include descriptions of intelligent material elements, (2) development of new models to assess the geometrically nonlinear effects of embedded elements in composite material systems, (3) application of numerical models of crack propagation behavior to predict growth of damage in intelligent composites, and (4) design of experiments to validate the analytical models and to further explore damage propagation in intelligent material systems. The analytical models developed under this effort will be implemented in widely used software systems (e.g. Mathermatics, NASTRAN).