The American Society for Composites (ASC) awarded best paper to Old Dominion University doctoral student Richard Larson and Oleksandr Kravchenko, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, during the ASC's 36th Annual Technical Conference.
The paper focused on their work in understanding variability in adhesively bonded composite sandwich joints due to material and manufacturing defects.
Two other co-authors, Andrew Bergan and Frank A. Leone, from NASA Langley Research Center, were collaborators on the project.
Kravchenko's research group, the Composites Modeling and Manufacturing Group (CMM), includes work on composites modeling and manufacturing for light-weight structural applications, including those in aerospace and automotive industries.
"In this work we developed complex simulation of the possible failure scenarios in adhesively bonded composite joints, which are considered by NASA to be used for Space Launch System," Kravchenko said.
Their failure modeling results were validated with experimental testing of the joints produced at NASA Langley Research Center.
The developed simulation tool can be used to improve the configuration of the joint by allowing for higher accuracy analysis early in the design process by considering the underlying variability in mechanical behavior due to the presence of defects.
Larson has been working in the CMM group for the past three years. His research area focuses on modeling stochastic variability in structural composites due to manufacturing defects and aleatory uncertainty.