Carbon-fibre composites crumple too easily when squeezed, and a new programme aims to stop that by redesigning them from the molecular level up. Current composites excel under tension—pulling forces—but fail under compression, where fibres micro-buckle or kink. This limits their use in real-world structures, forcing engineers to design well below the fibres’ intrinsic strength. The problem is complex: failure mechanisms couple across multiple lengthscales, from the chemistry of the matrix to the lay-up of the final component. The research will exploit new tools for visualising, calculating, and assembling materials with precision at every scale—molecules, fibres, layers—to suppress or redirect compression failure. It draws inspiration from natural hierarchical materials like wood and bone, but uses superior synthetic constituents. If successful, the work could unlock lighter, stronger structures for aerospace, automotive, and sporting goods, where compression performance currently sets design limits. It will also demonstrate a general framework for quantitative hierarchical materials design, applicable beyond composites. The programme is fundamentally curiosity-driven, but its tools and demonstrators will feed directly into industrial practice through an extensive group of industrial partners, helping maintain UK leadership in advanced manufacturing.
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High performance fibre-reinforced polymer composites are the current state-of-the-art for lightweight structures and their use is rising exponentially in a wide range of applications from aerospace to sporting goods. They offer outstanding mechanical properties: high strength and stiffness, low weight, and low susceptibility to fatigue and corrosion. The use of high strength, high stiffness materials in fibre form mitigates the tendency for premature brittle failure, enables components to be formed at low or moderate temperatures, and enables anisotropic designs to target the primary load-carrying demands. Fibres are particularly efficient in uniaxial tension but, under compression, composites suffer a range of failures typically associated with fibre micro-buckling or kinking, linked to matrix or interfacial issues; these mechanisms couple in a complicated way at a variety of physical lengthscales. Often, these types of failure determine the practical usage of composites and set design limits well below the expected intrinsic performance of the constituent fibres. On the other hand, new constituents and processes are becoming available that enable the directed assembly of composite structures, controlled across a much wider range of lengthscales than previously possible. In principle, then, composite materials should be redesigned to take advantage of these opportunities to supress or redirect the failure process in compression. Natural materials, such as wood and bone, are fully hierarchical, with precise structural features resolved at every possible magnification. Artificial composites lack this dexterity but can exploit intrinsically superior constituents. The increasing ability to visualise, calculate, and control structures, including with quantitative precision, will allow a new generation of composite materials to be developed. The ambition is to realise the full intrinsic potential of the fibres by designing such hierarchical systems for compression, from first principles, exploiting the latest developments in materials, processing, characterisation, and modelling of mechanistic processes. This programme focusses on the challenge of improving the absolute performance of composites in compression, both to address practical limitations of current materials, and as a demonstration of the value of quantitative hierarchical materials design. Tools and materials developed during this programme will be useful in a range of other contexts. The work will develop and embed structure at every lengthscale from the molecules of the matrix, to the lay-up of final components, using new constituents and new architectures, designed with a new analytical framework. The programme will benefit from a highly creative and interdisciplinary approach amongst the core project term, amplified by contributions from leading international advisors and collaborators. An extensive group of industrial partners will contribute to the project, and help to develop the outputs, building on concept demonstrators designed during the programme. The scientific and technical results will be widely disseminated nationally and internationally, helping to ensure UK leadership in this key field.
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