PhD Research Studentships
Damage Tolerant Ultralightweight Mechanical Metamaterials for Future Air Transportation
| Supervisor: | Tao LIU |
| Apply by: | 31 May 2023 |
| Start in: | September (Semester 1) |
Description
Aviation emissions accounted for 7% of UK Greenhouse Gas emissions in 2018, which suggests electrification could have a large impact on decarbonizing the aviation sector. The successful realization of large-scale all-electric aircraft architectures is heavily dependent on a breakthrough in high-performance structural materials to overcome the various limitations faced by conventional materials. Mechanical metamaterials (MMs) are a group of man-made architected materials that can be tailored to achieve unprecedented mechanical properties and multifunctionality through geometric arrangements rather than material properties of the constituents. Examples include MMs with negative passion ratio, MMs exhibiting programmed nonlinear responses and MMs with mechanical properties close to the upper boundaries predicted by theory. Combining with modern manufacturing technology, MMs are the ideal structural solutions for large-scale all-electric aircraft architectures.
The proposed research aims to establish a feasible design route to create damage tolerant ultralightweight mechanical metamaterials (MMs) for the next-generation large-scale all-electric aircraft. Damage tolerance is a fundamental requirement for high-performance structural materials. Structural materials are expected to (i) fail in a progressive manner that can give warning to failure events, and (ii) have good load-bearing capacity with the presence of flaws. Natural cellular materials, such as marine mussels, honeycombs, woods, trabecular bones, plant parenchyma and sponges, benefit from the disorderliness within their internal microstructures to achieve highly damage tolerant behaviours. Inspired by this, the objectives of this research are to (1) open up a novel design pathway for damage-tolerant ultralightweight MMs by engineering controlled degrees of disorderliness into initially periodic, ordered metamaterial systems. The initiative will be supported by novel, mechanics-informed data-driven approaches that can tune the distribution of disorderliness within the MMs, (2) design new classes of ultralightweight MMs with high damage tolerance, (3) establish the design principles of high performance, damage tolerant ultralightweight MMs, and (4) evaluate the effectiveness for multifunctional applications of MMs for all-electric aircraft architectures.
Funding
Funded by: EPSRCThis EPSRC DTP studentship is fully funded and includes a 3.5 years stipend (set at £19,668 for 2022/23) and fees at the home level.
Overseas applicant are encouraged to apply, but note that UKRI limit the proportion of international students appointed each year to 30% of the total.
Eligibility
- The minimum requirement for this studentship opportunity is a good honours degree (minimum 2(i) honours or equivalent) or MSc/MRes in a relevant discipline.
- If English is not your first language, you will require a valid English certificate equivalent to IELTS 6.5+ overall with a minimum score of minimum score of 6.0 in each of Writing, Listening, Reading and Speaking).
- Candidates are expected to start in September (Semester 1).
Contact
For informal enquiries about this opportunity, please contact Tao LIU.
Apply
Start an application for this studentship and for entry onto the PhD Aerospace Engineering full-time programme (Semester 1 / September start):
Please be sure to quote the reference "SEMS-PHD-439" to associate your application with this studentship opportunity.
| SEMS Research Centres: | ||
| Keywords: | Aerospace Engineering, Energy Technologies, Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Structural Engineering, Structural Mechanics, Systems Engineering, Materials Science - Other, Metallurgy, Polymers |