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University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
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Optimal Grading For Strength And Functionality Of Parts Made Of Interpenetrating Polymer Networks: Load Capacity Enhancement, Zhong Chen
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Uniform parts with stress concentrations or singularities are prone to failure under relatively small loads, which motivates researchers to seek methods to enhance the strength of these parts. This dissertation studies the optimization of material grading to design parts made of functionally graded interpenetrating polymer networks (FG-IPNs) to improve their load capacity.
An acrylate/epoxy IPN with variations of elastic Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and ultimate stress at failure is used for optimization of a plate with stress concentration. The grading is optimized by attaching the finite element method (FEM) solver to a general purpose bound-constrained optimizer. Two examples, a plate …