Dr. Abrar H Baluch

Working in Composite material group for Multi-scale design and simulation of composite structures for Aerospace/Automotive applications. Crash/impact simulation of composites. Managing the project from GKN-FOKKER Aerostructures, NL for experimental and virtual testing of composite materials, Damage, Impact, Crash. Key software used are ABAQUS/Explicit and LSDYNA with internally developed user subroutines.

Worked in R&D department on composite material in aerospace structures (helicopter composites fuel tank designing, sandwich panels with multiple combinations of CF fabric and UD carbon materials). Extensive structural analysis including explicit, linear static, modal analysis using Nastran and Patran. Earlier designing and analysis were conducted for composite propeller and drive shaft used for automobiles. Experimental work of different methods of composites manufacturing.

Awarded by BK 21 plus (Brain Korea) grant ($90,000) for smart structures and composite shielding system for spacecraft structural applications. Worked on effect of high temperature resistance polymer nano composite coating (PBI + MWCNTs) on carbon/epoxy composite for improvement in energy absorption and damage mechanism. Thin film coating by making surface hydrophilic via pressure plasma treatment and verification by XPS and SEM. Computational modeling for impact/crash analysis of composites in LS-DYNA.

Worked on smart structures and composite materials for development of oblique angled hybrid composite shielding system for the protection of spacecraft against hypervelocity impacts. Research included composites manufacturing from prepregs in different stacking sequences, their testing and validation, LEO environment testing, Impact/crash on composites with light gas gun, post processing, C-SCANNING. Computational analyses with LS-DYNA. Mesh free SPH-module used to simulate impact.

Composite materials, Impact and crash analysis, LS-DYNA, FEM

Erasmus Mundus Space Master (EU). Cranfield University, UK , LTU-Kiruna, Sweden Wurzburg Universität, Germany. Design & Analysis of composite materials, Finite element methods, Propulsion, Control engineering, System engineering, Structural mechanics, Spacecraft system engineering.