Abstract

Laminated structures are widely used across aerospace, energy, and transportation, yet their interlaminar resistance remains a central constraint on reliability. The challenge is twofold: cracks advance when the interface is prone to separation and when the structure supplies energy too readily. A coherent path to improvement therefore acts on both fronts—rewriting the local rules of separation while rerouting the global flow of energy to the crack.

Lever 1 — Engineer the interface. Laser-patterned treatment are used to tune the effective traction–separation response without altering base materials or chemistry. The governing insight is that topology and length scale, not mere treated area, reset failure mode and process-zone evolution, enabling predictable increases—and deliberate tuning—of effective fracture energy at bonded interfaces.

Lever 2 — Engineer the structure around the interface. By tailoring the geometry/compliance seen along the crack path, the global load–displacement scaling can be shifted from classical softening toward stabilized, even hardening, propagation. In practice, geometry is designed to control the energy-release rate as the crack advances, improving damage tolerance and predictability under service loads.

Viewed together, these levers provide a practical design toolkit: use surface physics to change how the interface separates and use structural geometry to control how much energy it receives. The result is bonded joints and laminated repairs that carry higher loads, delay onset, and propagate more predictably. The talk connects these concepts, outlines when to prefer one lever over the other, and highlights opportunities for hybrid strategies that combine interface patterning with geometric tuning to deliver robust, inspection-friendly structures.

Biography

Dr. Ping Hu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Physical Sciences and Engineering Division at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He earned his B.S. and M.S. from Beihang University and completed a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at KAUST (2018–2022). From 2023 to 2025, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanics and Production at Aarhus University. His work focuses on composite mechanics and interfacial fracture. He has published in Composites Science and Technology, Composites Part A/B, Surfaces and Interfaces, and Corrosion Science, and received the Adhesion Society’s Daniel R. King Memorial Travel Scholarship (2024) and a Certbond short-term scientific mission grant (2023).