Design News - Engineering Materials - Aerospace-Grade Composites Will Repair ThemselvesWe've talked a lot on the comment boards about the problems of repairing fiber-reinforced composites, especially pricier composites like the ones used in aerospace. Wouldn't it be cool if they could just repair themselves? That may not be such a wild idea. Engineers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology think they've found a way to do that.
A team led by professors Nancy Sottos, Scott White, and Jeff Moore in the Beckman Institute's Autonomous Materials Systems Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have invented a system of three-dimensional capillary microchannels carrying two different reactive fluids throughout fiber-reinforced composite materials such as fiberglass. The two fluids (an epoxy resin and a hardener) are contained in two vascular networks isolated from each other. When the composite is damaged by delamination, sections of the two networks at the damage site break apart, and the liquids mix and polymerize to heal the composite.
