Optimum design of composite structures

Designing main structural elements with FRP composite is limited due to lack of design specifications. Most of the available FRP composite structures are over designed due to the lack of the standards specification and understanding the FRP behaviour. The optimization techniques have been used widely in the design of FRP composite material for the aeronautical and mechanical applications. The design of FRP civil engineering structures is important in the form of saving cost, getting a proper safety factor and including ageing parameters for the design. Using optimization technique in the design gives opportunity to find the optimum values of the design variables, find the relationships between both variables and constraints and design the structure under different objectives. The applications of the FRP composite structures are mostly under the combination of external dynamic and static loads. Including the effect of dynamic load in the design is very important due to the variation of the structural behaviour under the dynamic load variation with time. The present research will involve both static and dynamic load design for the existing civil engineering applications.

Student

Mr Ziad Awad

Supervisors

Assoc Prof Thiru Aravinthan
Dr Yan Zhuge
Dr Luis Felipe Gonzalez Toro