Major Themes, Specific Objectives

The Major Themes of the Meeting and the Workshops selected are deemed to be of fundamental long-term interest, of strategic importance and of industrial relevance. The presentation of plenary (full length) papers only in the principal morning sessions, and the afternoon Workshops and small group activities or an evening Master-Class are designed to identify relevant material and engineering problems and to propose solutions to them through predictive modelling. By these means, the Meeting will establish a strong impetus amongst individuals for collaborative research.

The specific objectives of the Meeting are as follows:

•  Development of a reliability-based damage tolerant structural design methodology centred on “level of safety” (LOS) of structural components based on probabilistic assessment of in-service accumulated damage; ageing phenomena; durability issues:

•  Coupled design routes of intelligent-informed empiricism and development of model-informed constitutive equations to solve material problems; models applied to fracture, fatigue, creep, stress corrosion cracking phenomena; post-impact damage modelling; structure-behaviour relationships; temperature/time effects, etc:

•  Damage assessment and failure analysis; failure mechanism modelling; ability of ND inspection methods to detect defects, cracks; quality assurance of repairs:

•  Global and local effects (imperfections and variability in properties); analytical/numerical predictions; composite aircraft: quantification of effects on stiffness of key local phenomena in composite structures; optimisation studies:

•  Composite product design and the certification process; evaluating and characterising constraints:

•  Low cost manufacturing and plant assembly including improved qualification methodologies leading to reduced cost of certification and the accreditation of emerging structural composite materials systems; intelligent design and processing; innovative processing and fabrication methods:

•  To stimulate closer involvement between the best international engineers and scientists from academia, government and industry. (Interactions between the academic and government researchers with industrial counterparts will ensure the relevance of the work).

The outcome of this Meeting can influence aviation standards for the benefit and consideration of the major players world wide. Information gathered and coordinated knowledge at this Meeting will be transferred to industry via existing network communities, the National Composites Network (NCN) and Advanced Materials Forum (AMF), for example.