Phillip Cummins

Self-healing polymer compositions

Over the past decade, many different strategies were developed to introduce selfhealing properties in structural polymer composite materials. Although many of the investigated routes show promising results on an academic scale, the first commercially feasible self-healing structural polymer composite has yet to be developed. The main objective of this thesis is to contribute to the gap closure between the academic concept of structural self-healing composites and its fully implemented industrial applications. As such, each chapter targeted one of the existing scientific issues, within some of the most promising healing strategies available, that are currently preventing the industrial acceptance of self-healing polymer composites.