This paper presents an effective methodology for characterizing the mechanical parameters of composites using digital image correlation combined with the virtual fields method.By using a three-point bending test configuration,this method can identify all mechanical parameters of the material with merely a single test.Successful results verified that this method is especially effective for characterizing composite materials.In this study,the method is applied to measure the orthotropic elastic parameters of fiber-reinforced polymer-matrix composites before and after the hygrothermal aging process.The results indicate that the hygrothermal aging environment significantly influences the mechanical property of a composite.The components of the parameters in the direction of the fiber bundle decreased significantly.From the accuracy analysis,we found that the actual measurement accuracy is sensitive to a shift of the horizontal edges and rotation of the vertical edges.
The thermal protection materials and structures are widely used in hypersonic vehicles for the purpose of thermal insulation, and their mechanical behavior is one of the key issues in design and manufacture of hypersonic vehicles. It is our great pleasure to present the seven papers in this special subject of Theoretical ＆ Applied Mechanics Letters （TAML） and introduce the recent progresses on the mechanical behavior of thermal protection materials and structures by the authors.
The thermal protection performance of superalloy honeycomb structure in high-temperature environments are important for thermal protection design of high-speed aircrafts. By using a self-developed transient aerodynamic thermal simulation system, the thermal protection performance of superalloy honeycomb panel was tested in this paper at different transient heating rates ranging from 5℃/s to 30℃/s, with the maximum instantaneous temperature reaching 950℃. Furthermore, the thermal protection performance of superalloy honeycomb struc- ture under simulated thermal environments was computed for different high heat- ing rates by using 3D finite element method, and a comparison between calcu- lational and experimental results was carded out. The results of this research provide an important reference for the design of thermal protection systems com- prising superalloy honeycomb panel.
Dafang WuAnfeng ZhouLiming ZhengBing PanYuewu Wang
A novel method for modeling cellular materials is proposed based on MATLAB image processing and synchrotron X-ray computed tomography scan- ning to obtain an accurate calculation result of aluminum foam based on finite element model. The maximum entropy algorithm is employed to obtain the bina- rization image, and the median filtering algorithm is used to reduce the noise after binarization. The external contour and internal pores boundary is extracted by the ＂edge＂ function in MATLAB, and the geometrical model is reconstructed. A two-step mesh algorithm is adopted to mesh the reconstructed geometrical model. Accordingly, the finite element model of aluminum foam is established by the proposed method based on reconstruction geometrical model. The compression behavior of aluminum foam is obtained at 25℃, 100℃, 200℃ by ABAQUS, and good agreements with experiments are achieved by applying the present recon- struction algorithm and modeling method.
Xiaolei ZhuShigang AiXiaofeng LuLingxue ZhuBin Liu
Abstract The mechanical properties of plasma-sprayed thermal barrier coating （TBC） play a vital role in governing their lifetime and performance. This work investigated the microstructural and mechanical properties of TBC with high tem- perature treatment at 1 400℃ by scanning electron microscopy and indentation. We calculated elastic modulus and hardness through the application of Weibull statistics analysis. The results indicate that the microstructure of ceramic coat- ing will change continuously at high temperature, and accordingly the porosity decreases due to the grain growths and crack closes. In addition, the elastic mod- ulus and hardness nonlinearly go up with the heat treatment time and go down with increasing porosity. This demonstrates that the microstructural evolution and porosity of TBC are caused by high temperature treatment, and as a result its mechanical properties are influenced.
Residual stress evolution regularity in thermal barrier ceramic coatings （TBCs） under different cycles of thermal shock loading of 1 100℃ was investi- gated by the microscopic digital image correlation （DIC） and micro-Raman spec- troscopy, respectively. The obtained results showed that, as the cycle number of the thermal shock loading increases, the evolution of the residual stress under- goes three distinct stages： a sharp increase, a gradual change, and a reduction. The extension stress near the TBC surface is fast transformed to compressive one through just one thermal cycle. After different thermal shock cycles with peak temperature of 1 100℃, phase transformation in TBC does not happen, whereas the generation, development, evolution of the thermally grown oxide （TGO） layer and micro-cracks are the main reasons causing the evolution regularity of the residual stress.
In this paper the elastic constants of graphite at elevated temperature were experimentally investigated by using the virtual fields method （VFM）. A new method was presented for the characterization of mechanical properties at elevated temperature. The three-point bending tests were performed on graphite materials by an universal testing machine equipped with heating fumace. Based on the heterogeneous deformation fields measured by the digital image correlation （DIC） technique, the elastic constants were then extracted by using VFM. The measurement results of the elastic constants at 500℃ were obtained. The ef- fect on the experimental results was also analyzed. The successful results verify the feasibility of using the proposed method to measure the properties of graphite at high temperature, and the proposed method is believed to have a good potential for further applications.
Wrinkling and buckling of nano-films on the compliant substrate are always induced due to thermal deformation mismatch.This paper proposes effective means to control the surface wrinkling of thin film on the compliant substrate,which exploits the curvatures of the curve cracks designed on the stiff film.The procedures of the method are summarized as:1)curve patterns are fabricated on the surface of PDMS(Polydimethylsiloxane)substrate and then the aluminum film with the thickness of several hundred nano-meters is deposited on the substrate;2)the curve patterns are transferred onto the aluminum film and lead to cracking of the film along the curves.The cracking redistributes the stress in the compressed film on the substrate;3)on the concave side of the curve,the wrinkling of the film surface is suppressed to be identified as shielding effect and on the convex side the wrinkling of the film surface is induced to be identified as inductive effect.The shielding and inductive effects make the dis-ordered wrinkling and buckling controllable.This phenomenon provides a potential application in the fabrication of flexible electronic devices.
