…Crack Arrest and Self-Healing

Who’d have thought materials science could be so Bohemian? The evocatively named project is a joint venture between Imperial College and Bristol University to develop improved polymer composites that don’t crack easily, and can self-heal.

Polymer composites are the lightweight materials commonly used on aircraft to give high strength and low weight. They’re not perfect. Crack formation is a real danger, so designers often strengthen their creations by bulking up the composite. But the heavier an aircraft, the more fuel it uses, so there’s plenty of room for improvements.

Hence the new project, whose full name also wins the award for most over-engineered acronym. Crack Arrest and Self-Healing in Composite Structures (CRASHCOMPS) has received a £1.2 million grant from the EPSRC and the DSTL.

The press release describes how they’ll create these futuristic materials:

The team at Imperial will introduce materials which will deflect the path of the crack, and absorb the fracture energy associated with it. Once the crack has been arrested, the team at University of Bristol will utilise materials which ‘bleed and clot’, healing the crack and recovering much of the original material strength.

Talk about bleeding edge technology.