For more information click on

http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/mecheng/phd/projects/composite-aerospace-stru...

Ecole Polytechnique and McGill are seeking two PhD candidates for a large project aiming at understanding the effects of shot peening on the fatigue lives of aerospace components. The project involves 8 PhD students that will be working in close collaboration. The project is co-funded by the Canadian goverment and 5 leading aerospace companies located in Montréal. Some projects involve internships at these companies.

We are seeking two students for the following projects:

We are very pleased to announce the launch of a new journal in the field of mechanical engineering, Case Studies in Engineering Failure Analysis. This journal provides a forum for the rapid publication of short, structured Case Studies in Engineering Failure Analysis and related Short Communications and will provide an essential compendium of case studies for practitioners in the field of engineering failure analysis and others who are interested in the ways in which components fail.

Watch the 3-part video seminar where Sia Nemat-Nasser discusses certain basic issues regarding systematic homogenization techniques to extract the frequency‐dependent dynamic properties of microstructurally periodic composites, illustrating the results in terms of measureable and experimentally verifiable quantities.  To watch the videos, go to http://tinyurl.com/caudkwp

Fifth International Conference on Engineering Failure Analysis, 1-4 July 2012, Hilton Hotel, The Hague, The Netherlands

To register, go to http://www.icefaconference.com

A new tech brief was recently released on composite optimization. See below for additional information:  

Our Aerospace sector boasts an extraordinary amount of dedicated customers that produce high-quality conference papers year after year on their use of SIMULIA solutions. The papers provide extensive and in-depth coverage of the industry’s most popular topics: aircraft design, structural analysis, landing gear, composite testing, bird-strike and more. Download these select papers from the 2011 SIMULIA Customer Conference to learn more on how industry-leading companies such as Airbus, EADS, and Rolls-Royce Deutschland use Abaqus and Isight. 

Abaqus focused papers:

Space flight re-entry vehicles need to withstand heavy impact upon landing and it is critical for engineers to understand the effects on the vehicle and the crew to ensure the safety of the mission.  In order to gain this insight, engineers need to be able to model both the space craft structure and the landing medium such as water, sand, clay, etc.

The coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) method in Abaqus/Explicit provides the ability for capturing this interaction all within the framework of a single finite element model.  The simulation provides the means to investigate the peak accelerations faced by the crew or the payload during water landing.    

Space flight re-entry vehicles impart highly dynamic loads on the crew and/or payload during a water landing. To understand the behavior of the vehicle/payload system as it makes impact, a predictive framework that can simultaneously model the structure, the highly deformable landing medium (water or soil), and their interaction is required. The coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) method in Abaqus/Explicit provides the means for capturing these complex physical phenomena. In this Technology Brief, the simulation of a re-entry vehicle water landing will be demonstrated, and strong agreement with test results will be shown.

Composite structures often have a higher capacity for ab-sorbing energy than their metal counterparts. The crush-ing behavior of composite materials is complex, and the inclusion of composite components in vehicles for crash protection can necessitate expensive experimental test-ing. The ability to computationally simulate the crushing response of composite structures can significantly shorten the product development cycle and reduce cost in the aerospace, automotive, and railway industries.

Bird strikes cost the United States aviation industry tens of millions of dollars annually in aircraft damage and schedule delays. Increasing the ability of the aircraft to resist bird strike induced damage is one part of an overall approach to mitigating this expense [1]. Experimental bird strike testing is part of the certification process for certain aircraft component designs. If a subset of the tests can be replaced with computational simula-tion, the cost of the prototype testing can be reduced. Fur-ther, bird strike resistance considerations can be included in the design process, thus increasing the probability that certification tests will be successful. In this Technology Brief we describe how Abaqus/Explicit has been used to assess the bird impact performance of a wing slat.

A mechanical system, such as aircraft landing gear, can have a large number of parts that interact in a complex nonlinear fashion. The challenge of simulating such a sys-tem lies not only in capturing the correct physical behavior but in using efficient analysis techniques. Different levels of modeling abstraction may be appropriate for different stages of the design process. Initial sizing and kinematics can be studied with a partially rigid representation, while final designs are more often analyzed with fully meshed flexible geometry.

Composite materials offer significant design advantages in the aerospace industry. High strength and light weight are the two most attractive features for aircraft and space vehicle designs. However, their complex material behav-ior makes analysis of these structures a significant chal-lenge, particularly in a high speed impact event. The ad-vanced composite modeling and industry leading simula-tion capabilities of Abaqus/Explicit make analysis of these challenging materials straightforward and allow accurate prediction of ballistic limit, damage and failure. This tech-nology brief describes an analysis of the dynamic impact of a steel projectile onto a unidirectional carbon fibre rein-forced plate and the specific advantages of Abaqus/Explicit for this type of simulation.

The use of composite materials in the aerospace industry is increasing. Composite materials offer a relatively high strength-to-weight ratio as well as the ability to create large, integrated structures. One composite component can replace 10 or more traditional metal parts, which can dramatically reduce manufacturing time and cost.

The Faculty of Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia is organizing this International Conference to bring together researchers and engineering professionals from all over the globe to meet and deliberate in the beautiful green city of Kuala Lumpur.

Date: May 17, 2011 - May 19, 2011
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Web Page: http://www.iiu.edu.my/icmaae/2011/
Contact Email: icmaae@gmail.com
Organizer: Mechanical Engineering Dept., Faculty of Engineering, International Islamic University
Deadlines: December 15, 2010 (abstract), April 1, 2011 (registration)