Despite the clear cost, ease of installation, and construction schedule advantages of confinement of concrete structural elements with fibre-reinforced polymers (FRPs) for strength and deformability enhancement, concerns as to their performance at elevated temperature, or in fire, remain. The results of a series of elevated temperature experiments on FRP and textile reinforced mortar (TRM) strengthening systems for confinement of circular concrete columns are presented. The behaviour and effectiveness of the respective confining systems is studied up to temperatures of 400 °C. A total of 24 concrete cylinders were wrapped in the hoop direction with different amounts of FRP or TRM, heated to steady-state temperatures between 20 and 400 °C, and loaded to failure in concentric axial compression under a steady-state thermal regime. The results indicate that the effectiveness of the FRP confining system bonded with epoxy decreased considerably, but did not vanish, with increasing temperatures, in particular within the region of the glass transition temperature of the epoxy resin/adhesive. Conversely, the TRM confining system, bonded with inorganic mortar rather than epoxy, demonstrated superior performance than the FRP confining system at 400 °C as compared against tests performed at ambient temperature.

Brachyuran crab carapaces are protective, impact-resistant exoskeletons with elaborate material microstructures. Though several research efforts have been made to characterise the physical, material and mechanical properties of the crab carapace, there are no studies detailing how crab morphologies might influence impact resistance. The purpose of this paper is to characterise and compare Brachyuran crab carapace morphologies in relation to their impact properties, using opto-digital, experimental and numerical methods. We find that crab carapaces with both extended carapace arc-lengths and deep carapace grooves lose stiffness rapidly under cyclic impact loading, and fail in a brittle manner. Contrarily, carapaces with smaller arc lengths and shallower, more broadly distributed carapace grooves are more effective in dissipating stresses caused by impact throughout the carapace structure. This allows them to retain stiffness for longer, and influences their failure mode, which is ductile (denting), rather than brittle fracture. The findings in this paper provide new bioinspired approaches for the geometrical designs by which means material failure under cyclic impact can be controlled and manipulated.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, global health services have faced unprecedented demands. Many key workers in health and social care have experienced crippling shortages of personal protective equipment, and clinical engineers in hospitals have been severely stretched due to insufficient supplies of medical devices and equipment. Many engineers who normally work in other sectors have been redeployed to address the crisis, and they have rapidly improvised solutions to some of the challenges that emerged, using a combination of low-tech and cutting-edge methods. Much publicity has been given to efforts to design new ventilator systems and the production of 3D-printed face shields, but many other devices and systems have been developed or explored. This paper presents a description of efforts to reverse engineer or redesign critical parts, specifically a manifold for an anaesthesia station, a leak port, plasticware for COVID-19 testing, and a syringe pump lock box. The insights obtained from these projects were used to develop a product lifecycle management system based on Aras Innovator, which could with further work be deployed to facilitate future rapid response manufacturing of bespoke hardware for healthcare. The lessons learned could inform plans to exploit distributed manufacturing to secure back-up supply chains for future emergency situations. If applied generally, the concept of distributed manufacturing could give rise to “21st century cottage industries” or “nanofactories,” where high-tech goods are produced locally in small batches.