Project title: The Fatigue Analysis and Manufacturing Defect for Composite Wind Turbine Blades
The economic and efficient use of composite materials in critical load bearing applications relies on the possibility and the ability to predict safe operational lives without excessive conservatism. Identifying critical defects and monitoring techniques in inhomogeneous materials requires an understanding of the various failure mechanisms which can take place. The aim of this research is to identify the critical defects, measure their characteristics, relate them to the material properties and create a new knowledge on improving sustainability of composite materials.
The objectives of this research are as to identify the critical defects that affect the static and dynamic strength of composites, analyse and evaluate the failure of composite materials due to these defects recommend processes to mitigate these defects, perform FEA to validate experimental results; and ascertain the sustainability of composite material. The director of studies for this research is Prof Anjali DeSilva and it is co-supervised by Dr Esther Smith.