DMREF MechE Team 2016

Congratulations to mechanical engineering professors Vicky Nguyen, Kevin Hemker, and Sung Hoon Kang who, along with Prof. Mark Robbins (Dept. of Physics & Astronomy) and Prof. Peter Olmsted (Georgetown University), recently received a $1.6M Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer Our Future (DMREF) grant from the National Science Foundation.

According to the award documents,”This grant will provide new scientific understanding of the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) process and its effect on the underlying molecular structure and properties of 3D-printed polymers.”

The team will perform fundamental research in order to understand how printing conditions affect the materials properties of polymers printed by FFF. This research will advance the application of FFF to structure-critical components, provide computational tools to accelerate the design of FFF printed parts, and develop the next generation 3D-printing technology for polymers – ultimately benefitting the US economy with knowledge gained.

 

Multi-scale modeling of fused filament fabrication printed materials.

Multi-scale modeling of fused filament fabrication printed materials.

A coarse-grained molecular dynamics model from Robbins showing the tensile failure of a polymer interface for long and short weld times.

A coarse-grained molecular dynamics model from Robbins showing the tensile failure of a polymer interface for long and short weld times.