The Aeronautical Structures Laboratory aims to prepare students with the knowledge and ability to design and manufacture composite structures materials helping researchers get their engineering concepts into practice.
The equipment which, are basically hand tools, drilling, cutting and most importantly a vacuum bag with a controlled temperature kiln can be used for resin-curing and produce suitable hand-layup composite laminates. In that way, you can build different layouts depending on a given fiber orientation to obtain the mechanical properties or a unique material characteristic.
Since composites adhesively bonded joints are showing an increasing contribution in the aerospace industry, the laboratory also provides techniques to manufacturing Single Lap Joints specimens and other specific configurations to obtain the adhesive or laminate fracture toughness. The laboratory it is also equipped whit a sandblaster to increase adherent surface roughness and improve adhesion. To summarize, bellow you can find a list of some of the specimens that you can make in our laboratory:
- Uni or Multidirectional Composites Specimens;
- Single Lap Joints Specimens with multiple adhesive thicknesses;
- Double Cantilever Beam Specimens and End Notched Flexure Specimens;
- Sandwich Structures;
- Resin bulk Specimens;
- Metal Specimens.