453Internal Stresses in Polymer Composite Processing and Service Life

Date:

1 December 2003 – 3 December 2003

Location:

Ecole des Mines de Saint-Etienne, France

Contacts:

Chairpersons:
Professor Alain Vautrin
Mecanique et Materiaux,
Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Saint-Etienne
158, cours Fauriel, 42023 Saint-Etienne Cedex 2, France
E-mail: vautrin@emse.fr

Professor Luigi Nicolais
Materials and Production Engineering,
University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy

EUROMECH contact person: Professor Ahmed Benallal

Website: http://www.emse.fr/euromech453

The colloquium aims at gathering together researchers and experts from different fields: mechanics, physics and chemistry of polymer matrix composites. It will cover every theoretical, experimental and numerical topics related to internal stresses in composites due to processing or in-service environment.

The increasing use of composites in systems which should keep a high reliability on the long term still requires more effort to guarantee constant in-service performances of products. The occurrence and growth of internal stresses during the process and service life can lead to dimensional variation, damage or structural instability that should be predicted. Therefore well-founded models leading to reliable simulations and possible reduction of those effects should be developed. The actual lack of knowledge on polymer matrix composites behaviour under time-variable process temperature and pressure, and hygrothermal in-service conditions is critical and should be overcome to draw full benefit from this type of materials.

Contributions on hybrid methods combining experiments and numerical simulations to identify properties or validate models are particularly encouraged.

The prominent interest of the colloquium is to provide a review multidisciplinary approaches that have lead to both theoretical and technological progress in composite structures.

Statistics of 57 participants