T.E. (Tong-Earn) Tay is a Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS). He obtained his Bachelors of Engineering (First Class) and PhD in Solid Mechanics from the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research interests are in computational modeling and analysis of progressive damage, failure, fracture, impact, integrated design and manufacturing, multiscale modeling of fiber-reinforced composite materials and structures. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Reinforced Plastics & Composites, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Composite Materials, International Journal of Damage Mechanics, Applied Composite Materials, and Multiscale and Multidisciplinary Modeling, Experiment and Design. He has served on a number of scientific advisory committees of international conferences on composites and presented several keynote, plenary and invited talks. He is the author or co-author of 148 international journal papers, 3 invited book chapters, 3 patents and 245 conference and seminar presentations. He has obtained research funding from various agencies and industry, including Rolls-Royce, Airbus Germany, Haliburton Far East, Vestas, US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), A-Star Science & Engineering Research Council (SERC), Defence Science Organization (DSO), Marine Port Authority (MPA) and Ministry of Education. He is a recipient of JEC Life Achievement Award, a registered Professional Engineer (PE), Chartered Engineer (CEng), Founding Fellow of the Singapore Academy of Engineering (FSAE) and Council Member of the Asian-Australasian Association for Composite Materials. He was Head of Department of Dept of Mechanical Engineering, NUS, from Oct 2011 to Dec 2015, and Vice-Dean for Research for Faculty of Engineering, NUS, from Nov 2009 to Sep 2011.

Title

High-Fidelity Computational Failure Analysis of Composite Structures 

Abstract

Fiber-reinforced composites offer lightweight, high-strength and high-stiffness solutions for many structural applications. The trend of increasing composites use is anticipated to continue well into the future as the drive for sustainable solutions gains urgency. However, due to their anisotropic and laminated nature, the fracture and damage mechanisms of such structures are coupled and complex. The prediction of structural performance of composite structures is critical to their design and optimization of material usage. This requires understanding of the interaction and evolution of damage mechanisms and their accurate modeling in computational analysis, often at multi-scale levels. Recently, advanced and innovative computational methods have been devised to improve failure prediction based on underlying mechanics and progressive damage observations. This lecture will overview the advantages of some recent discrete crack approaches [1,2] for composites as well as high-fidelity methods such as an adaptive discrete-smeared crack (A-DiSC) method [3] that could point the way to model impact damage and failure of large composite structures. Innovative finite element squared (FE2) methods [4] have potential to solve multi-scale fracture and damage problems in composites by directly incorporating failure mechanisms at the micromechanics levels and enable efficient structural modeling of complex 3D-printed structures. A brief overview of the research activities of the composites materials and structures group at the Dept of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, will also be included in the presentation.

References

[1] J. Zhi, T.E. Tay, Explicit modelling of matrix cracking and delamination in laminated composites with discontinuous solid-shell elements, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, v.351, 60-84 (2019)

[2] X. Lu, B.Y. Chen, V.B.C. Tan, T.E. Tay, A separable cohesive element for modelling coupled failure in laminated composite materials, Composites Part A: Applied Science & Manufacturing, v.107, 387-398 (2018)

[3] X. Lu, M. Ridha, V.B.C. Tan, T.E. Tay, Adaptive discrete-smeared crack (A-DiSC) model for multi-scale progressive damage in composites, Composites Part A: Applied Science & Manufacturing, v.125, 1-16 (2019)

[4] V.B.C. Tan, K. Raju, H.P. Lee, Direct FE2 for concurrent multilevel modeling of heterogeneous structures, Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, (accepted, 2019)