There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

A review of shape memory alloy research, applications and opportunities

Aircraft wings are a compromise that allows the aircraft to fly at a range of flight conditions, but the performance at each condition is sub-optimal. The ability of a wing surface to change its geometry during flight has interested researchers and designers over the years as this reduces the design compromises required. Morphing is the short form for metamorphose; however, there is neither an exact definition nor an agreement between the researchers about the type or the extent of the geometrical changes necessary to qualify an aircraft for the title ‘shape morphing.’ Geometrical parameters that can be affected by morphing solutions can be categorized into: planform alteration (span, sweep, and chord), out-of-plane transformation (twist, dihedral/gull, and span-wise bending), and airfoil adjustment (camber and thickness). Changing the wing shape or geometry is not new. Historically, morphing solutions always led to penalties in terms of cost, complexity, or weight, although in certain circumstances, thes...

A Review of Morphing Aircraft

Carbon (C) is a crucial material for many branches of modern technology. A growing number of demanding applications in electronics and telecommunications rely on the unique properties of C allotropes. The need for microwave absorbers and radar-absorbing materials is ever growing in military applications (reduction of radar signature of aircraft, ships, tanks, and targets) as well as in civilian applications (reduction of electromagnetic interference among components and circuits, reduction of the back-radiation of microstrip radiators). Whatever the application for which the absorber is intended, weight reduction and optimization of the operating bandwidth are two important issues. A composite absorber that uses carbonaceous particles in combination with a polymer matrix offers a large flexibility for design and properties control, as the composite can be tuned and optimized via changes in both the carbonaceous inclusions (C black, C nanotube, C fiber, graphene) and the embedding matrix (rubber, thermoplastic). This paper offers a perspective on the experimental efforts toward the development of microwave absorbers composed of carbonaceous inclusions in a polymer matrix. The absorption properties of such composites can be tailored through changes in geometry, composition, morphology, and volume fraction of the filler particles. Polymercomposites filled with carbonaceous particles provide a versatile system to probe physical properties at the nanoscale of fundamental interest and of relevance to a wide range of potential applications that span radar absorption, electromagnetic protection from natural phenomena (lightning), shielding for particle accelerators in nuclear physics, nuclear electromagnetic pulse protection, electromagnetic compatibility for electronic devices, high-intensity radiated field protection, anechoic chambers, and human exposure mitigation. Carbonaceous particles are also relevant to future applications that require environmentally benign and mechanically flexible materials.

A review and analysis of microwave absorption in polymer composites filled with carbonaceous particles

The extensive development of electronic systems and telecommunications has lead to major concerns regarding electromagnetic pollution. Motivated by environmental questions and by a wide variety of applications, the quest for materials with high efficiency to mitigate electromagnetic interferences (EMI) pollution has become a mainstream field of research. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art research in the design and characterization of polymer/carbon based composites as EMI shielding materials. After a brief introduction, in Section 1, the electromagnetic theory will be briefly discussed in Section 2 setting the foundations of the strategies to be employed to design efficient EMI shielding materials. These materials will be classified in the next section by the type of carbon fillers, involving carbon black, carbon fiber, carbon nanotubes and graphene. The importance of the dispersion method into the polymer matrix (melt-blending, solution processing, etc.) on the final material properties will be discussed. The combination of carbon fillers with other constituents such as metallic nanoparticles or conductive polymers will be the topic of Section 4. The final section will address advanced complex architectures that are currently studied to improve the performances of EMI materials and, in some cases, to impart additional properties such as thermal management and mechanical resistance. In all these studies, we will discuss the efficiency of the composites/devices to absorb and/or reflect the EMI radiation.

Polymer/carbon based composites as electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials

https://koasas.kaist.ac.kr/bitstream/10203/5765/1/000235054600022.pdf

Fabrication and electromagnetic characteristics of electromagnetic wave absorbing sandwich structures

Estimation of dynamic structural displacements using fiber Bragg grating strain sensors

In this paper, the placement of piezoelectric sensors and actuators has been studied. Genetic algorithms have been used to find efficient locations of piezoelectric sensors and actuators of a smart composite place. Locations of both sensors and actuators have been determined with consideration of controllability, observability and spillover prevention. The composite specimen with piezoelectric sensors and actuators has been prepared according to the optimization result. The experimental vibration control shows significant vibration reduction for the controlled modes with little effect on the residual modes. In addition, the closed loop system is observed to be robust with respect to system parameter variations.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0964-1726/8/2/012/pdf

Optimal placement of piezoelectric sensors and actuators for vibration control of a composite plate using genetic algorithms

Postbuckling and vibration characteristics of piezolaminated composite plate subject to thermo-piezoelectric loads

The structure shape itself is of great interest for many aerospace applications. For example, the stability of the surface shape of large, high precision or space reflectors is essential for the communication performance. The knowledge of static and dynamic displacements of these structures would provide the possibility to enhance their performance by appropriate countermeasures. During operation, however, the direct measurement of displacements of the whole structure is often difficult. This study investigates whole displacement field estimation using strain measurement and a displacement–strain-transformation approach. The use of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) as strain sensors for this application offers the possible implementation of an integrated sensor network including many measurement points within only a few optical fibers. This paper discusses many issues related to the displacement field estimation of a dynamically excited plate using a transformation matrix based on a modal approach. In order to reduce systematic displacement estimation errors due to aliasing, a parametric study was performed and the sensor locations were optimized. Experimental validation was also conducted using a cantilever plate equipped with 16 FBG sensors in an optimized configuration. The estimated displacements showed good agreements with those measured directly from laser displacement sensors.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0964-1726/18/2/025006/pdf

Jae-Hung Han

Papers

Fabrication and electromagnetic characteristics of electromagnetic wave absorbing sandwich structures

Estimation of dynamic structural displacements using fiber Bragg grating strain sensors

Optimal placement of piezoelectric sensors and actuators for vibration control of a composite plate using genetic algorithms

Postbuckling and vibration characteristics of piezolaminated composite plate subject to thermo-piezoelectric loads

Displacement field estimation for a two-dimensional structure using fiber Bragg grating sensors