 Ph.D. student Javaid Anwar with his first-place poster at the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering conference. (Photo: David Scott) |
Ph.D. student Javaid Anwar returned from the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering conference this spring with the event’s best student poster.
Anwar competed with other young engineers, researchers and industry professionals, winning first place for his work on the long-term behavior of bolted connections between fiber-reinforced polymer materials. His adviser, David Scott, said it’s work that sheds important light on the use of these materials in large infrastructure projects.
“Bolted connections are a common method of joining fiber-reinforced polymeric composite members,” Scott said. “Whereas numerous studies have focused on the influence of various connection parameters on the short-term response of bolted connections in pultruded FRP composites, few have examined their long-term behavior.”
The durability of these connections is an important factor in whether they make sense for civil engineering applications, Scott said, noting the materials’ high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios, resistance to corrosion, and design flexibility make them alluring alternatives to traditional materials.
"When these novel materials are used in other industries, such as aerospace or automotive engineering, the long-term performance under sustained loads is not usually a substantial consideration,” Scott said. “However, for civil structures, service lives are measured in decades, and the time-dependent behavior of these structures over these long periods must be accounted for.
“Javaid's work is the first substantial investigation into how connections between these advanced materials behave over extended periods of time."
Anwar’s winning poster focused specifically on the effect of bolt-hole clearance, bolt-tightening torque and temperature on the long-term behavior of single pin-bearing connections in pultruded fiber-reinforced polymeric composite materials.