Craig Przybyla
Composites Branch, Materials and Manufacturing Directorate,
Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA
Tuesday, Mar. 29th at 10am
Room o560 MEK
ABSTRACT: The Department of the Air Force is increasingly challenging the art of what is possible in order to compete with potential adversaries who are advancing their technology rapidly to counter the current established international order. Materials are at the heart of many current technology concept limitations, particularly those that operate in extreme environments such as future hypersonic vehicles or orbiting space systems. Here we will discuss several ongoing efforts to increase our ability to characterize and predict composite performance in application relevant extreme environments. For example, machine learning approaches are being employed to automate the classification of features in composite microstructures. This is allowing researchers to detect and track individual fibers in three-dimensional x-ray CT datasets to characterize local microstructural variation and damage. We are also employing machine learning to better understand damage initiation and propagation in composite structures at the microscale. Here, a reduce-order, data-driven, probabilistic predictive model to quantify damage initiation in CMCs at pertinent lengths scales was developed. This data driven framework was developed to incorporate microstructural features using a statistical representation and using them to predict matrix crack initiation and propagation. Additional modeling approaches such as continuum damage and phase field fracture modeling approaches are also being leveraged to model the physics of microstructure dependent damage progression. Such approaches have to potential to better inform engineers during the design, certification and sustainment of complex systems. The calibration and application of these models to currently produced relevant CMC systems will be discussed. Finally, perspectives on future needs and research directions in these areas will be addressed.
BIO: Dr. Craig Paul Przybyla is currently the Research Team Leader of the Composite Performance Team at the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio where he leads a team of researchers focused on the performance characterization and prediction of advanced polymer and ceramic matrix composites for aerospace applications. His specific area of specialty includes the performance characterization and modeling of composites in extreme environments. Prior to that assignment, he was a Materials Research Engineer at the Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales (ONERA) in Châtillon, France as part of the Engineering and Scientist Exchange program between the United States Department of Defense and French Ministry of Defense from 2019-2021. In that position, Dr. Przybyla collaborated with our French allies on the utilization of advanced numerical techniques to predict the performance of high temperature composites as a function of the stochastic material microstructure in application relevant environments.