APPLICATION FOCUSED DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF POLYMER MATRIX COMPOSITES FOR SOLAR CELL ENCAPSULATION

Reducing the number of experiments is the motivation behind the development of computational tools and it also saves the time and resources. Special attention is being paid to the development of theoretical models for different properties of composite materials so that these may be able to estimate the material properties. Many different theoretical models for capturing the trends in the structural, thermal and electrical properties of composite materials are available in the literature. The challenging issue is to develop a computational methodology which makes use of these models to design a composite for a specified application. In general, each application requires a set of structural, thermal and electrical properties in an acceptable range. This requirement acquires a smart combination of matrix, reinforcements and their relative concentrations and distributions so that a gain in certain property may not entail a setback in other. There are some other processing parameters which also play role in making the properties of final product. The proposed work is aimed at designing a general route from raw materials to the targeted application, particularly for polymer matrix composites. A three step methodology will be adapted in each case: (1) design of composite material using property prediction models, (2) development of characterization of the designed material and finally (3) evaluation of the performance for the targeted application.