Daniel Bull

Daniel Bull is a research fellow at the University of Southampton. Daniel completed his PhD at the University of Southampton where his focus was on understanding the role of particle toughening on impact damage resistance and damage tolerance in composite materials. Part of the novelty of his research was the application of X-ray computed tomography for damage assessment where he developed time-series experiments and quantification methods to better understand the toughening micromechanisms under impact and compression after impact testing.  Daniel is working on a Hub feasibility study which focuses on strain based non-destructive evaluation for online inspection and prognostics. This work covers the challenge in the automotive industry regarding high throughput of composite components and the need to check for manufacturing quality and consistency. The project focuses on the development of high-speed inspection technologies on compression moulded components which are challenging to manufacture consistently due to the random dispersion of short carbon fibres. The research links the surface response of a test component subjected to an excitation load (cyclic and vibrational) through a process called lock-in digital image correlation (to measure local strains) and thermoelastic stress analysis (to measure local temperature changes) to detailed quantitative measurements made from X-ray computed tomography.