Session: 01-09: Magnetic Materials

Paper Number: 111175

111175 - Morphing Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composite Coated With Magnetic Alginate Spheres 

In the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of smart materials or stimuli-responsive materials in high-tech industries and material science technologies. New trends are working towards the development of materials that can be controlled and/or act in a predicted manner, undergoing significant macroscopic deformations when an external stimulus is applied (e.g. heat, electricity, light, pH value, moisture, and magnetism). Here a novel carbon Fiber reinforced composite design is presented. This composite consists of a thermosetting epoxy resin that exploits giant stiffness variation with temperature. The composite is integrated with alginate-based magnetic microspheres placed in strategic locations so that, upon exposure to a magnetic field and by manipulating the stiffness of the epoxy, the composite can be morphed into a new shape. Alginate is a biopolymer composed of two sugar residues. The formation of microspheres integrated with magnetite particles, is created by fast crosslinking while the size of the microspheres is controlled with a fine-tuned fabrication process. The immobilized Fe₃O₄ particles are found to be extremely reactive when exposed to the field. The study analyses different scenarios in which such microspheres are either surface mounted or embedded in the composite layup.  It is shown that the obtained stimuli response composite not only allows to achieve accurate and controllable shape changes, but also enhances the damping coefficient of the material.

Presenting Author: Alessandro Porrari University of Rome, RomaTre

Presenting Author Biography: Alessandro Porrari is a PhD student in Material Science at the University of Rome. He is specialized on the development of multifunctional materials