Composite materials are widely adopted in the naval industry, due to their high strength and low weight. However, how these materials respond to underwater loads, such as wave pressure and underwater explosions, is still unclear.
In their new work, our team: Postdoctoral Associate Peng Zhang (now Assistant Professor at Tennessee Tech University), Undergraduate Student Yichen Guo, and Prof. Maurizio Porfiri resolved this problem experimentally, by combining advanced techniques to study the simultaneous motion of the fluid and deformations of the material.
Read the paper “An experimental methodology to study impulsive hydrodynamic loading of air-backed composite plates” here.
Image credit: Peng Zhang, Yichen Guo, and Maurizio Porfiri.