Science, Engineering and Technology GroupDepartment of Materials Engineering

STRUCTURAL COMPOSITES AND ALLOYS, INTEGRITY AND NON -DESTRUCTIVE TESTING (SCALINT)

Research profileResearch line: Composite Materials Group• Composites on micro- and nano-level: “engineering”

by intelligent placement of nano-reinforcements• Composites on macro- and meso-level: experimental

and modelling studies of textile composites, random fibrecomposites, textiles, porous materials and biomaterials

• Natural fibre- and bio-composites: fibre morphologyand mechanical performance, fibre-matrix interfacialadhesion, novel fibre processing methods

• Processing and product development: concurrentoptimisation of products and manufacturing processes

• Physical chemistry of composites: tuning the physicaland chemical properties of the matrix, the fibres, and the nano-reinforcement

Research line: Metals and AlloysIt deals mainly with the plasticity of advanced metallicmaterials. Its activities include: • Analysing and modelling of microstructure and texture

evolution during plastic deformation• Deriving physics-based constitutive laws for their

mechanical behaviour• Developing dedicated characterisation methods for

their complex microstructures• Participating in the development of innovative

deformation processes

Research line: Materials Performance and Non-destructive TestingIt investigates the long-term behaviour and reliability of materials and products.• Damage development during different loading types

is studied using a number of non-destructive andadvanced monitoring techniques

• Besides polymers, ceramics and metals, research isalso dealing with advanced materials such as particulateor fibre reinforced composites, biomaterials andcellular materials

Biaxial tensile tester

The acousto-optic technique

ContactDepartment of Materials EngineeringStructural Composites and Alloys, Integrity and Non-destructive Testing (SCALINT)Kasteelpark Arenberg 44 box 24503001 LEUVEN, Belgiumwww.mtm.kuleuven.be/Onderzoeksgroepen/SCALINTinfo@mtm.kuleuven.be

KU Leuven. Inspiring the outstanding.

Unique infrastructure• Physical characterisation equipment: XRD including

texture and residual stress, nanoSEM equipped withautomated EBSD for micro-texture measurements,SEM-FIB

• Software for materials with crystallographic texture:crystal-plasticity FE (CPFEM); in-house developments:MTM-FHM (mathematical texture analysis), ALAMEL(deformation textures), MTM-PLAST-ANISO (FEManalysis of metal forming)

• A complete set of composite processing equipmenton lab scale: prepreggers, autoclaves, compressionmoulding, thermoforming, RTM, VARI and TP-RTM

• General mechanical testing (tension, bending,compression, shear, fatigue, impact)

• Specialised mechanical testing, ECAP dies, high-speedtension, biaxial tensile and picture frame shear tester(for textiles), micro-tensile tester (for fibres, interfaces),Wilhelmy balance (for surface energy on fibres)

• In-house developed and commercialised software forthe internal structure of textiles (WiseTex) and for thesimulation of textile composites behaviour in processingand performance (TexComp, FlowTex, MeshTex)

• Non-destructive testing techniques: X-ray, optical full-field strain measurement, nano- and micro-computed tomography, ultrasonic C-scan, acousto-optictechnique, optical fibre technology, structural healthmonitoring sensors, eddy currents, ultrasound

Acoustic emission detection by optical fibers in CFRP FEI NOVA 600 nanolab DualBeam SEM/FIB