'Toolkit' to prove lifetime of composites for building

It is widely believed that composite structures have greater durability than other construction materials because they do not corrode. However, before they can be become a common feature in buildings engineers need to be able to predict how long structures will be fit for purpose.

Prof Toby Mottram of the School of Engineering at Warwick University told The Engineer, ‘Durability is only something you discover with time…Fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) structures that are out there are designed — or over-designed — because we don’t know how they’re going to perform in the field.

‘Rather than building prototypes and learning from failure, which is historically how we’ve learned with most materials and building systems, this [project] is a way of overcoming that.’

Warwick will provide a toolkit that that combines experiment-based testing methodology together with advanced computational techniques using multiscale FEA plus real liability methods linking to climate changes.