Jonathan Tham

Education:

• BASc, University of Waterloo, Canada

Research interests:

• Crashworthiness of Composite Structures
• Fracture Mechanisms in Composites
• Composite-specific Design Optimization
• Finite Element Modeling of Composite Structures

Summary of work:

In pursuit of improved performance, fuel economy and safety, vehicle manufacturers are turning to composite vehicle structures for weight reduction. As further advances are made in the manufacturing techniques for carbon fiber reinforced composites, the manufacturing costs of such composites have decreased significantly, which means they are no longer limited to being used in high-end vehicles only.

By modelling the behavior of composite materials in vehicle structures, both development time and costs can be reduced significantly through the use of finite element analyses.

Due to the differing material behavior in metals compared to fiber-reinforced composites, my work aims develop a model to accurately capture the mechanical behavior of fiber-reinforced composite structures.