Highly Impact-Resistant Silk Fiber Thermoplastic Composites

Silk fibers combine good stiffness and strength with a very high strain to failure and are as such highly promising to realize composites with high impact resistance. It is shown that to realize this potential it is quite beneficial to employ matrix materials of high strain to failure, particularly thermoplastic matrices. High impact...

Scalable bacterial production of moldable and recyclable biomineralized cellulose with tunable mechanical properties

Sustainable structural materials with excellent impact-resistance properties are urgently needed but challenging to produce, especially in a scalable fashion and with control over 3D shape. Here, we show that bacterial cellulose (BC) and bacterially precipitated calcium carbonate self-assemble into a layered structure reminiscent of tough...

Assessing the use of Circumferentially Notched Tension specimen for fracture toughness determination of ductile offshore steels

The Circumferentially Notched Tension (CNT) specimen is a potential candidate for determining the fracture toughness of highly constrained cracks, theoretically approaching plane strain conditions, even for small test specimen dimensions. This research aims to experimentally evaluate the use of the CNT test specimen geometry to fracture...

Residual strength of bonded stiffened panels: prediction and experimental verification

This report presents results of residual strength calculations, carried out on cracked panel configurations of various designs and provided with bonded stiffeners. The calculations were carried out using the computer program BOND. The results of these calculations are compared with results of residual strength tests, performed on panels of...

Numerical calculation of the compliance of a tapered double cantilever beam specimen for testing mode 1 toughness properties of adhesive joints