PhD studentship in Mechanical/Material Engineering – Investigation of toughening mechanism and pseudo-ductility in fibre-reinforced composites

There is an PhD studentship in material engineering (composite materials) in University of Southampton Malaysia (see pdf attached). The studentship covers 3 years of tuition fees and living stipend of RM2,300/month. The student will get to spend up to a year in the University of Southampton UK main campus.

Summary
Fibre-reinforced polymer composites are stiff and strong, but they are typically not damage tolerant. They fail suddenly with little warning and residual load bearing capacity, leading to overdesign of composite parts with high safety factors. It is therefore of interest to develop a pseudo-ductile composite such that it exhibits a subcritical progressive failure process similar to yielding and strain hardening of ductile metals accompanied by detectable or visible damage which can serve as a warning sign before final failure or as a design stress limit. As in most engineering materials, there is always a dilemma of strength versus toughness. So there is a need to mitigate the brittleness of composites while having adequate design strength for high performance structural applications. The fracture mechanisms which contribute to improved ductility need to be understood in order to optimise the performance of composite materials. This challenge constitutes the main focus of the proposed project.

Applicants should hold a minimum of an upper-second class degree (or equivalent qualification) in Mechanical/Material Engineering with a strong interest in advanced composite materials, and be available to start by the end of 2019.

For further information, please contact Dr. Gan Khong Wui (K.W.Gan@soton.ac.uk)

This post has been edited by hia0hia0: Sep 10 2019, 03:15 PM


Attached File(s)
 PhD_studentship.pdf ( 162.23k ) Number of downloads: 64