Team Name: Intelligent Materials and Structural Mechanics
Brief Introduction:
The team focused on major education and research center in Intelligent Concrete/Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics, and Wave-Absorbing Stealth and Control of Intelligent Structures in China. It provides undergraduate to post graduate education in solid/computational/material mechanics more than 50 students received their Master or Doctoral degrees in the last 5 years. The research activities in the intelligent materials and structural mechanics includes key research fields as follows:
l Intelligent Concrete and Structural Mechanics
l Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics
l Wave-Absorbing Stealth and Control of Intelligent Structures
The Intelligent Materials and Structural Mechanics at WHUT has been working on education of solid/computational/material mechanics since 2001. The team was composed of 2 professor and 4 vice professors. And the team faculty members are listed as:
Lab Resource
Labs:
l Intenlligent Concrete and Structurral Mechanics Lab:
Position: Mechanics building, office 109, 404, 517
Email: sunmqing @whut.edu.cn, whuang@whut.edu.cn, lln@whut.edu.cn
Working hour: 8:00 am ~17:00 pm, Monday~Friday
l Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics Lab
l Position: Mechanics building, office 221, 222, 223,421
l Email: liujili @whut.edu.cn, wgdHL@163.com
l Working hour: 8:00 am ~17:00 pm, Monday~Friday
l Intenlligent Concrete and Structural Mechanics Lab:
Position: Mechanics building, office 420
Email: liaaf @whut.edu.cn
Working hour: 8:00 am ~17:00 pm, Monday~Friday
l Instrumentation &Facilities:
l High-temperature Chamber Furnace
Lab: Intenlligent Concrete and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Heating samples or materials in a high-temperature environment
l Vacuum Drying Chamber
Lab: Intenlligent Concrete and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Vacuum drying of samples
l Standard Constant Temperature and Humidity Curing Chamber
Lab: Intenlligent Concrete and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Standard curing of concrete samples
l VIC-3D DIC (Digital Image Correlation) Measurement System
Lab: Intelligent Concrete and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Strain and displacement measurements
l Dynamic thermomechanical analyzer DMA
l Lab: Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Measure the relationship between the mechanical properties of viscoelastic materials under periodic force or displacement and temperature or frequency.
l Differential Scanning Calorimeter DSC
Lab: Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: measure the energy absorbed or released by the sample during the heating, cooling or constant temperature process under the specified atmosphere.
l Metallographic optical microscope
Lab: Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Measure the microstructure of the material sample
l CNC wire electrical discharge cutting machine
Lab: Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Cut metal materials and prepare specific samples.
l Arc fuse metal additive manufacturing equipment
Lab: Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Prepare metallic materials and structures.
l Welding robotic arm system
Lab: Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Prepare metallic materials and structures.
l Friction and wear mechanical testing machine
Lab: Intelligent Metallic Materials and Structural Mechanics Lab
Function: Friction and wear mechanical testing machine
Team achievements
Research Area 1:
(Cement and Concrete Research 118(2019)1-13)
Abstract: This study addresses the effect of curing regimes on the mechanical properties, hydration and microstructure of ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC). The results demonstrate that the mechanical properties are strengthened by increasing curing temperature, but the flexural/tensile to compressive strength ratio shows an unusual increasing tendency with increasing temperature and compressive strength, which is opposite to normal concrete. The nano-mechanical properties are also enhanced by heat treatment. The ultra-high density phase is dominated hydrates. Microstructure observation indicates that heat treatment promotes the formation of additional hydrates with high-packing density and stiffness such as tobermorite and xonotlite, enhancement of transition zone around steel fiber, quartz and clinker, average chain length of hydrates and pozzolanic reaction between quartz/silica fume and Ca(OH)2. The evolution of hydrates and microstructure due to curing regimes and the presence of quartz play key roles in controlling the unusual behavior of the strength ratio and improvement of mechanical properties.
Paper Title: The effect of curing regimes on the mechanical properties, nano-mechanical properties and microstructure of ultra-high performance concrete
Author: Peiliang Shen, Linnu Lu, Yongjia He, Fazhou Wang, Shuguang Hu
Research Area 2:
(Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 2024,328: 118422.)
Paper Title: Synergetic Enhancement of Ultimate Strength and Damping Properties by Special Pore Structure in Novel Porous Cu-Al-Mn Shape Memory Alloy
Author: Xide Li, Jili Liu, Haidong Wang, Dawei, Qiu, Lei Zhang, Junsheng Yang and Yuzuo Liu.
Abstract: In response to the application requirements of shape memory alloys with high strength and high damping performance, a staged powder metallurgy process for preparing a new type of porous Cu-Al-Mn SMA was proposed. The porosity of the alloy was controllable within a certain range, and the influences of Al content and sintering pressure on its pore structure and mechanical properties were clarified. And through the regulation of porosity, the strengthening of γ2 phase and the pinning effect, the high phase deformation damping of porous shape memory alloys at high strength was achieved. The synergistic improvement of strength and energy dissipation capacity is attributed to the increase of movable migration interfaces caused by pores, as well as the pinning effect of dislocations and the second phase γ₂ phase and their mutual coupling enhancement effect.
Research Area 3:
Paper Title: A model for photothermal conversion of graphene-filled nanocomposites under NIR irradiation
Author: Fang Li, Lanlan Wang, Hongyan Tian, Haiyu Zhang, Yongshui Lin
Abstract: Graphene, acted as an excellent photothermal inorganic filler in photothermal smart composites, has triggered the fast increasing research upsurge in biomedical imaging, photothermal therapy, photothermal driving and so on recently. Many studies have shown that a low mass loading graphene nanosheets (GNSs) in a matrix can provide the nanocomposite with high photothermal conversion efficiency in the near-infrared (NIR) region due to its strong NIR adsorption and high thermal conductivity. Aiming to indicate the photothermal conversion mechanism, an analytical model was proposed based on the Maxwell electromagnetic wave theory, thermodynamics method and effective medium approximation. The effect of GNSs’ size and mass concentration on the temperature and absorbed energy of composite under NIR irradiation were taken into account in this paper. The influence mechanism of NIR irradiation intensity and interfacial thermal resistance on photothermal effect are all revealed. In addition, the mechanism of photothermal conversion is clarified based on the discussion of the energy conversion process. In general, the photothermal conversion performance can be enhanced by increasing in GNSs’ mass concentration, NIR light intensity and interfacial thermal resistance or decreasing in GNSs’ aspect ratio by increasing GNSs’ lateral dimension.
Research Area 4:
Paper Title: Integrated design and performance study of microwave absorption and load bearing for an embedded honeycomb superstructure
Author: Runxin Wu, Fang Li, Hao Liang, Haiyu Zhang and Xiangshao Kong
Abstract: Compared with coated absorbing materials, honeycomb absorbing structural have raised widespread attention due to their better impedance matching, ability to provide multiple reflections and serve as mechanical structures. However, traditional honeycomb structure still has a huge space for improvement under the traction of wide and strong absorption performance, as well as the consideration of thin and light structural design. This article takes the developed multi-walled carbon nanotubes/carbonyl iron/epoxy resin composite material(MWCNT/CI/EP) as the absorbing material, and then embeds it into the traditional honeycomb absorbing structure through a special multi-scale superstructure design to acquire a new type of honeycomb superstructure that combines excellent absorbing performance and mechanical properties. The influencing factors such as structural parameters, incident angles, and polarization modes on the absorption performance of this superstructure was studied through simulation analyses. Research has shown that the designed embedded honeycomb superstructure can achieve full frequency coverage of less than -10dB within 2-18GHz, with a minimum of -39dB, a maximum of -10.4dB and an average level of -18dB. The embedded honeycomb superstructure designed in this article has made breakthroughs in terms of absorption and mechanical properties compared to honeycomb structures with the same areal density, providing a certain inspiration for the research of structural and functional composite design.
Research Area 5:
Patent Title: A preparation method of a porous Cu-Al-Mn-based alloy with extremely large compressive elastic strain
Author: Jili Liu, Xide Li, Jiang Li, Yan Zhu.
Research Area 6:
Product: Cement-based Grounding Modules
Participants: Ming-qing Sun, Jian-zhong Chen, Li Huang
Cooperators：Hubei Ziyang Technology Limited Co.
