Planning I/UCRC Georgia Institute of Technology: Center for Science of Heterogeneous Additive Printing of 3D Materials (SHAP3D)

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Additive manufacturing technologies are widely used in a variety of industries including consumer products, automotive, medical, aerospace, and machinery. The additive manufacturing industry exceeds $5 billion in 2015 and is expected to top $20 billion within the next five years. It has become an extremely competitive area of research in countries around the world. To ensure US' global leadership in this emerging field originated from the US, academic partners (currently including Georgia Institute of Technology (GT), University of Connecticut (UConn), and University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML)) have come together to create the Center for Science of Heterogeneous Additive Printing of 3D Materials (SHAP3D). SHAP3D will serve the diverse interests of industry, government, and academia by addressing fundamental research challenges to meet the commercial needs of industry for 3D printing of heterogeneous materials. SHAP3D will develop the critical and necessary insight into fundamental processing-structure-property relationships to predict and control the integration of diverse materials for 3D printing. The work of SHAP3D will be critical as the industry adopts 3D printing for product prototyping, tooling, and higher volume manufacturing with three specific economic outcomes. First, the Center will pursue higher performance materials and composites that enable diverse and lighter weight products to minimize total life cycle costs and environmental footprint. Second, in order to minimize processing costs, the Center will explore more optimal and parallel processes to more quickly print products with higher resolution. Third, SHAP3D will investigate interfacial physics and design concepts for integrating dissimilar materials to facilitate multi-functional components/products, broaden the number of 3D printed applications, and increase market size. Active collaboration with industry partners will ensure relevance to education and training of the future workforce to expedite the adoption and integration of 3D printing methods into manufacturing processes. The three institutions will create a scholarship fund specifically for the recruitment of diverse graduate students. A portion of this scholarship fund will be directed to underrepresented students from minority serving institutions, including community colleges. Educational programs associated with this IUCRC target undergraduate and graduate students at GT and local community colleges, K-12 students, and industry professionals. The GT site will work closely with GT?s Center for Engineering Education and Diversity (CEED) graduate fellow program to enhance diversity. Integration of materials research and education will be developed in collaboration with partners, such as Institute of Materials, GT Manufacturing Institute, and GT Polymer Network. The GT site will also work closely with the Research Experience for Student Veterans in Advanced Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship (REVAMP) REU site to train undergraduate students in fundamental principles of advanced manufacturing, with a focus on veterans and minority students. In addition, the GT site will disseminate the research results to K6-12 students through school teachers in metro Atlanta area by NSF research experience for teacher (RET) program. The SHAP3D Center will perform research to understand the synthesis, properties, and processing of heterogeneous materials for integration into complex, additively manufactured products. The work SHAP3D envisions would encompass many different additive printing methods, such as fused deposition modeling (FDM), selective laser sintering (SLS), stereolithography (SLA), poly/ink jet, and other additive approaches. The Center will perform fundamental material modeling and processing research to establish and translate validated materials and processes to students and practitioners. The proposed center will enable: (i) the rational design and creation of new material feedstocks and, (ii) the understanding of material properties, protocols, and design rules that must be characterized and developed to optimize the process and predict the properties of products and parts created from multiple polymer materials (e.g., different constituent materials, fillers/additives, and interfaces). GT has extensive expertise and longstanding experience in manufacturing, materials, electronics design and packaging, device fabrication and characterization, and biomedicine. GT will draw on a diverse team of faculty from Mechanical, Materials, Industrial, Chemical, Electrical Engineering Schools. Faculty members from this team will make contributions to the next generation of 3D printed functional multi-materials for functional products with research focused on materials, processes, design, and simulation.