Invited Speaker

Dr. Yuan Chen

Dr. Yuan Chen

Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing for Continuous Carbon Fibre Reinforced Composites,
Southern University of Science and Technology, China
Speech Title: Three-dimensional Meta-composite of High Thermal-dimensional-stability

Abstract: High thermal-dimensional stability is crucial for high-precision applications, e.g., unmanned monitoring of Moon surface environment, etc. This study designs a novel 3D carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) meta-composite with high thermal-dimensional stability. First, the planar CFRP meta-composite was designed with a continuous carbon fibre reinforced polyamide (PA) central cross-lattice interlocked with four short carbon fibre reinforced PA outer-strips, fabricated via fused filament fabrication. The results show that the CFRP meta-composite can achieve an effective CTE of 4.6×10−6/℃ from the direct experimental measurements and of 4.9×10−6/℃ from the numerical simulation. Then, a novel three-dimensional (3D) meta-composite was developed and calculated, exhibiting a negative effective CTE at −0.18×10−6/℃, based on the planar composite meta-composite. After lightweight optimisation under the constraint of CTE to zero for the 3D meta-composite, the optimal 3D CFRP meta-composite can possess an effective density of 0.0266 g/cm3 and an effective CTE of 0.0173×10−6/℃, which are 15.3% and 90.39% enhanced, respectively, as compared to those of the initial one, demonstrating its high thermal-dimensional-stability.

Keywords: Continuous carbon fibre, finite element analysis, coefficient of thermal expansion, FFF, thermal-dimensional stability.


Biography: Dr. Yuan Chen serves as an assistant professor at Southern University of Science and Technology. He obtained his PhD degree from the University of Sydney in 2019. From 2019 to 2022, he was an ARC postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney, focusing his research on mechanism analysis, damage prediction, structural design and advanced manufacturing, etc. for composite materials and structures. As the first or correspondent author, he has published over 30 papers in renowned international journals such as Compos Sci Technol, Compos Part A, etc. and his research outcomes have been well recognised and appraised by world-renowned experts, academic institutions, international organisations and so forth. He has been elected as Editor-in-Chief for Advanced Manufacturing: Polymer & Composites Science (Taylor & Francis) and invited to give speeches and chair sessions at various prestigious academic seminars and international conferences, and currently he has been the editorial board member, topical advisory panel member, guest editor, etc. of famous international academic journals. He is also a professional member of several renowned academic societies and organisations, such as Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), European Materials Research Society, etc.