Dr. Corona conducts his research in the Structural/Solid Mechanics Laboratory at Fitzpatrick Hall of Engineering.

Current Research

Degradation and Buckling of Structural Members Under Cyclic Loading

In many practical applications, structures must be designed to withstand cyclic loads which occasionally can be large enough to cause repeated yielding of the material. Cyclic excursions into the plastic range of the material can lead to degradation and buckling of structural members due to accumulation of deformation. The problems being considered at this time are: columns and cylindrical shells under cyclic axial load and I beams under cyclic pure bending. The objective of the research is to carefully study the structural degradation and buckling of the columns, shells and beams. The investigation is conducted using combined experimental and numerical approaches. The experimental results expose the behavior of the structural members. Numerical simulations are conducted to study the predictive capabilities of current analytical tools, especially with respect to the constitutive modeling of the material since this type of problems are very demanding on the cyclic plasticity models used to generate predictions.

Bending of Laminated Steel Sheet

The laminated steel sheet of interest here consists of a thin polymer layer sandwiched between two sheets of steel. This type of construction has the characteristic that it dampens sound. Therefore, it is attractive for the construction of items such as computer hard drive cases, firewalls in automobiles and other applications where sound absorption is desired. Bending operations during manufacture with this product have some side effects such as large springback and wall curling. A combined experimental and analytical investigation is being carried out to study the bending problem and establish how springback and wall curling can be minimized.

Tube Hydroforming

Tube hydroforming is a manufacturing process to produce tubes with relatively arbitrary cross-sections. In this process, a tube of circular cross-section is placed inside a die that has the desired shape. The tube is then internally pressurized and expanded against the die. Simultaneously, material is fed axially into the die by compressing the tube. The research consists of developing a simple numerical analysis to simulate the expansion process. This should be useful in the selection of process parameters such as the pressure level and the ratio between pressure and axial feed.

 

Selected Recent Publications

Corona, E., Waters, W. A. and Starnes, J. H., "Collapse of Rectangular Plates with Cracks," AIAA Journal, 40, pp. 1665-1672, 2002.

Corona, E., Shaw, J. A. and Iadicola, M. A., "Buckling of Steel Bars with Lüders Bands," International Journal of Solids and Structures, 39, pp. 3313-3336, 2002.

Corona, E., "Stability of the Shanley Column under Cyclic Loading," ASME Journal of Applied Mechanics, 68, pp. 324-331, 2001.

Miller, J. E., Kyriakides, S. and Corona, E., "On Bend-Stretch Forming of Aluminum Extruded Tubes: Part II Analysis," International Journal of Mechanical Sciences, 43, pp. 1319-1338, 2001.

Corona, E. and Kyriakides, S., "Asymmetric Collapse Modes of Pipes Under Combined Bending and External Pressure," ASCE Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 126, pp. 1232-1239, 2000.

Direct comments, questions, and corrections to amedept@nd.edu