Imperial College London

Prof Alexander Bismarck

Faculty of EngineeringDepartment of Chemical Engineering

Visiting Professor
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 5578a.bismarck Website

 
 
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Assistant

 

Mrs Sarah Payne +44 (0)20 7594 5567

 
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Location

 

526ACE ExtensionSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@inproceedings{Bismarck:2016,
author = {Bismarck, A and Maples, HA and Tridech, C and Zhang, B and Robinson, P},
title = {Controllable stiffness composites: An overview},
year = {2016}
}

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - CPAPER
AB - Composites with controllable stiffness have a number of potential applications including their use as skin materials in morphing aerostructures. Much work has focused on the development of such materials, which are required to withstand aerodynamic loads but also deform on demand at relatively low actuation forces. We provide an overview of the work carried out at Imperial College London on the development of high performance controllable stiffness composites. Two composite designs were explored, 1) composites containing thermoplastic interphases and 2) composites containing thermoplastic interleaf layers. Large reductions in stiffness of up to 99% were achieved when the composites were heated above the glass transition temperatures of the polymer interphase or interleaf layer. At these temperatures the composites could be deformed significantly and would retain their shape when cooled to room temperature. The process was completely reversible as the composites would return to their original configuration when reheated without an applied load. Self-deploying structures have also been manufactured from the controllable stiffness materials using the shape memory effect of the composites.
AU - Bismarck,A
AU - Maples,HA
AU - Tridech,C
AU - Zhang,B
AU - Robinson,P
PY - 2016///
TI - Controllable stiffness composites: An overview
ER -