One of our PhD students, Dr. Nikhil Garg has successfully completed his PhD, supervised by Prof. Gangadhara Prusty. Co-supervisors are Prof. Chongmin Song, Dr. Andrew W. Phillips. This PhD research was a collaborative project between ARC Training Centre for Automated Manufacture of Advanced Composites (AMAC) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group, Maritime Division.

Title of PhD: Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method for Inter-ply Damage Prediction in Thick Laminated Composites

Fibre reinforced laminated composites offer many benefits over conventional materials and hence are now used in most engineering sectors. However, their intrinsic in-homogeneity and anisotropic properties make modelling of damage initiation and propagation a challenging task. This study explores a relatively new semi-analytical approach, Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method (SBFEM), for accurate and efficient modelling of inter-ply damage in thick laminated composites, which is sometimes referred to as interfacial imperfection, debonding or delamination.

SBFEM is a tool which combines the benefit of finite element method (FEM) and boundary element method (BEM). In SBFEM, boundaries are solved numerically, whereas an analytical solution is obtained inside the domain. Also, as it offers high flexibility in meshing and can handle hanging nodes, modelling of damage becomes easier. In this way, SBFEM reduces the computational cost of the model many folds without any compromise in the accuracy. 

Publications during the PhD:

1. Garg, N., Saputra, A., Donough, M., Song, C., Phillips, A.W. and Prusty, B.G., 2021. “Application of scaled boundary finite element method for three-dimensional modelling of bi-axial bending in thick laminated composite plates.” Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, pp.1-13. (doi.org/10.1080/15376494.2021.1989526)
2. Garg, N., Prusty, B.G., Ooi, E.T., Song, C., Pearce, G. and Phillips, A.W., 2020. “Application of scaled boundary finite element method for delamination analysis of composite laminates using cohesive zone modelling.” Composite Structures, 253, p.112773. (doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2020.112773)
3. Garg, N., Chakladar, N.D., Prusty, B.G., Song, C. and Phillips, A.W., 2020. “Modelling of laminated composite plates with weakly bonded interfaces using scaled boundary finite element method.” International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 170, p.105349. (doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2019.105349)
4. Garg, N., Prusty, B.G., Song, C. and Phillips, A.W., 2020. “Cylindrical bending of thick laminated composite plates using scaled boundary finite element method.” Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements, 120, pp.73-81. (doi.org/10.1016/j.enganabound.2020.08.009)
5. Garg, N., Donough, M., Song, C., Phillips, A.W. and Prusty, B.G., 2022. “Three-dimensional scaled boundary finite element method to study interfacial imperfections in thick laminated composite plates undergoing bi-axial bending.” Under Review
6. The Fifth Australasian Conference on Computational Mechanics (ACCM2021), Dec 2021, “Scaled Boundary Finite Element Analysis of Laminated Composites”, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia.
7. Poster presentation – 5th Engineering Postgraduate Research Symposium, Dec 2019, “Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method based prediction of inter-ply failure in laminated composite structures”, UNSW Sydney, Australia.
8. Poster presentation – International Conference on Composite Materials (ICCM22), Aug 2019, “Scaled boundary finite element based method for crack initiation and propagation in fibre-reinforced composite structures”, Melbourne, Australia.