Abstract

This talk will briefly introduce the motivation behind research into damage of polymer bonded particulate composites.

I will outline two different approaches to model the same problem; continuum and microstructurally resolved.

The continuum approach is found to be very pragmatic and with a few simple equations one can adequately describe experimental results under some conditions, the most notable being the necessary requirement that damage is occurring homogeneously throughout the composite.

However, to progress physical understanding a microstructurally resolved framework is required. In doing so the computational and experimental overhead is vastly increased. Under many circumstances the problem collapses to one of describing of interfacial adhesion. I will present current experiments performed to characterise interfacial adhesion in terms of a so-called ‘thermodynamic value’ and micro- and macro- ‘measured values’.

Finally I will present the future direction of this research designed to exercise a microstructurally resolved model currently under development at Imperial College London.