The Potential of Composite Materials in

Civil Engineering applications

John SummerscalesUniversity of Plymouth

Civil engineering

• ICE definition includes …– about creating, improving and

protecting the environment in which we live.

– facilities for day-to-day life and for transport and industry to go about its work.

– Civil engineers design and build bridges, roads, railways and tunnels. They also design and build tall buildings and large structures …

Outline of talk• Buildings, highways, water supply and

drainage, coastal protection etc• Numerical modelling (FEA/CFD) and

optimal design (e.g. genetic algorithms)

• Standards• Quality, Environmental, Safety and

Health (QuEnSH) systems• Challenges

Key characteristics of composites

• low density• high specific modulus/strength• creep and fatigue resistance*

• durability in corrosive environments*

• ballistic resistance

* Lin Liao et al, Journal of Advanced Materials, 1998, 30(4), 3-40.* G Pritchard, Reinforced Plastics Durability, Woodhead, 1999.

New materials• fibres:

– basalt– reclaimed “milled” short carbon fibres– natural fibres

• matrix:– bio-based resin systems

• nano-additives• embedded sensors and biomimetics

Re-bar

• potential use for pultruded sections• pulsed microwave curing giving

alternating– cured solid section– uncured flexible sections

Cladding• Mondial House

– one half of panels removed after 33 years service– one half of panels cleaned and polished.

• American Express, Brighton c.1977.– structural cladding supporting glazing.

• functional formwork?

Images:Reinforced Plastics, May 2007, 51(5), 26-29+31-33.Reinforced Plastics, September 2006, 50(8), 22-32.

Housing

Experience of (a) prefabricated housing+ (b) naval vessels

= (c) floating, or submerged, residences to • alleviate pressure on fertile land• protect against flooding (Bangladesh/New Orleans)

Images:FRP bungalow built by Charles Roberts (WY), circa 1963 (photo by JS, 2004).HMS Wilton FRP hull built by Vosper Thornycroft circa 1970.

Housing 10 billion people

• Build– high … multi-storey building

• energy required to lift components

– dry … into the desert regions• bonded composites require no water

– wet … onto or under the sea• (as on earlier slide)

Floating infrastructures• VISIONS Network of Excellence

– Visionary Concepts for Ships & Floating Structures– European FP6 priority 1.6.2 sustainable transport– http://www.maritime-visions.net

• free-ports• renewable energy• NIMBY: not in my back yard• offshore gambling casinos

Image from:WEGEMT Academic Contest Guidelines 2009.doc

Third world.. and .. disaster relief• move the village to the water

or pipe the water to the village ?• lightweight water tankers

– more water, less vehicle

• prefabricated shelters

(p)rehabilitation• Earthquake containment

– over-wrapped bridge supports– why not adopt “functional formwork”

rather than do this retrospectively?

• Pipework– in-situ-form pipe lining

• Historic structures– Ightham Mote (National Trust)

Bridges• Several modest examples in Europe• Some strengthening/rehab in USA• proposed Straits of Gibraltar Bridge

as a flagship project

U Meier, Proposal for a carbon fibre reinforced composite bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar at its narrowest site, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Management and Engineering Manufacture, 1987, 201(B2), 73-78

Transport

Need for private carsor effective public transport ?:• dedicated elevated/tunnelled routes

ensuring no delays regular and reliable service on-demand provision?

High speed rail-links• Shanghai airport to centre

– 30 km in 7min 20s (advertised as 8min)– maximum normal speed of 431 km/h

(268 mph)– … but mostly ac-/de-celerating

• flight check-in is tedious, so• given concern over aircraft emissions

the challenge is to convert domestic air(intra-continental) to high speed rail.

Coastal defences

• University of Liverpool Department of Mathematical Science

– metamaterial “invisibility cloak”could reduce the risk of large water waves overtopping coastal defences

– need to replicate in a ‘real’ life situationto protect land from natural disasters/tsunamis, and defend structures such as oil rigs in the ocean.

M Farhat, S Enoch, S Guenneau and AB MovchanBroadband Cylindrical Acoustic Cloak for Linear Surface Waves in a Fluid. Physical Review Letters, 26 September 2008, 101, 134501:1-4.

Renewable energy

• Land– hydroelectric– wind– geothermal

• Sea– waves– tidal barrage and tidal stream– ocean thermal energy conversion

(OTEC)

Numerical modelling and optimal design• Finite Element Analysis

– laminate stacking sequence– material/structural anisotropy

• Computational Fluid Dynamics• Genetic Algorithms

– but where is the underlying database?

Standards

• Positive:– Sims (NPL) drove aerospace CRAG

to ISO standards

• Negative:– lack of standards for thick composites– difficulty of addressing multiple laminate

configurations/stacking sequences– need a champion for this sector

Joints and connections• adhesives• pultrusions with connectors:

– Composolite®

– Startlink

Quality, Environmental, Safety and Health (QuEnSH) systems

• Quality > ISO 9000 series• Environment > ISO 14000 series• Safety and Health > OHSAS 18000

series• QuEnSH aims to integrate these

systems

Quality, Environmental, Safety and Health (QuEnSH) systems

• Off-site preparation of modular systems

• Lower embodied energy• More comprehensive

(quantitative) Life Cycle Assessment• Embedded systems for

structural health monitoring

Cost• Composites inherently expensive?• Move fabrication to low-wage economy• Consider system costs, e.g.

– Autovia del Cantabricofirst carbon-fibre composite bridge in Spain

– easy and quick to assemble– completed in 10 hours using a 50 tonne

crane (equivalent structure in concrete > 400 tonne crane)

Entering the ecological agePeter Head’s

Brunel International Lecture series for the Institution of Civil Engineers“Entering the ecological age: the engineer's role”http://www.ice.org.uk/brunel

heavy focus on biomimetics

Sustainability Assessment to Overcome Barriers to Renewable Construction Materials

• NetComposites and BRE lead LINK collaborative research projectfunded through the renewable materials programme.

• Focus on assessing the environmental credentials of naturally derived construction materials.

• Raw material supply – including crop production and land-use• Energy requirements for primary and secondary processing • Durability of these naturally derived materials

compared to conventional alternatives• End of life issues

including recovery/re-use, recycling, composting and disposal.

Environment

Robert Constanza et al

• The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital[Nature, May 1997].

• The biosphere provides us with services worth some US$33 trillion per year- nearly double the world’s GDP!

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment• Easy to express in monetary terms:

– Agriculture and livestock, hunting, fishing, water supply, genetic resources, various chemicals

• More complex to evaluate (regulatory services):– Carbon sequestration, atmospheric regulation, air

quality, water supply, erosion, nutrient supply, regulation of pests and diseases

• Difficult to evaluate (cultural services):– Aesthetic, artistic, educational, spiritual/religious,

recreation and leisure.• http://www.millenniumassessment.org (2000)

QuantitativeLife Cycle Assessment (QLCA)• acidification• climate (global warming)• eutrophication• ozone• resource depletion• smog• toxicity ISO14040

series

Yves Sciama:

• … in 2007 global warming managed to impose itself as a world-wide issue

- whereas biodiversity is still struggling to rise above the status of a marginal issue. [research*EU 56 dated June 2008].

A world without bees

• strange case of vanishing western honeybee– colony collapse disorder

• varroa mites and/or agrochemicals

– dangerously out of kilter with nature?– the world can't survive without it:

• “no more pollination, no more plants, no more man”.

• May Berenbaum:– “managed honey bees will cease to exist by 2035”

Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum, A World Without Bees

Guardian Newspapers, June 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0852650929.MR Berenbaum, Colony Collapse Disorder and Pollinator Decline, US House of Representatives Committee, 29 March 2007

Algae

• as the ocean warms,the area that can support growth of algae grows smaller … driven ever closer to poles, until algal growth ceases. Threshold for failure of the algaewhich actively remove CO2 from the airis ~ 500 parts per million (ppm)which we will reach ... in about forty years.James Lovelock, The Revenge of GaiaAllen Lane, London, 2006.ISBN-13: 978-0-713-99914-3

Social factors

• Skilled industry personnel– accredited training– higher salaries in aerospace/Formula 1?

• Educate the users– Plymouth Civil Engineering BEng students

take same 20 credit composites course asBEng Mechanical Engineering with Composites

Key challenges

• conservatism of civil engineering industry

• price sensitivity• absence of comprehensive

“materials” property database• absence of design codes• automated manufacture

Acknowledgements

• Toby Mottram, University of Warwick• Dave Easterbrook, University of

Plymouth• Fethi Azizi, University of Plymouth

download the PowerPoint fromwww.tech.plym.ac.uk/sme/composites/cobra

e.ppt

Thank you for your attention

… any questions?