Planning I/UCRC University of Connecticut: Center for Science of Heterogeneous Additive Printing of 3D Materials (SHAP3D)

University Of Connecticut, Storrs CT

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. A large number of companies in Connecticut supporting the aerospace and shipbuilding sectors will benefit from the I/UCRC. UConn?s Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center (AMIC) has introduced state-of-the-art additive manufacturing to over 120 companies and government agencies. Faculty members affiliated with this I/UCRC have also participated in many well-established outreach programs targeting students, industry, and the general public. For instance, an additive manufacturing workshop was held at UConn in 2015 in collaboration with non-profit 
Connecticut Youth Forum. This Forum empowers over 700 urban, suburban and rural youth through civil dialogue, service learning, and leadership development activities. With the support of this award, the UConn team will work closely with the Engineering Diversity Program and student-led 3D Printing Club at UConn to initiate new educational outreach programs, especially targeting high schools in inner city Hartford and Willimantic with high minority populations. In addition to offering industry workshops and relevant projects through existing NSF REU and BRIDGE programs, the UConn team will also coordinate with local industry partners and professional organizations to create new senior design projects and co-op/internship opportunities. 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). The proposed technical activities at UConn will draw from the existing strengths of the School of Engineering (SoE) and the Institute of Materials Science (IMS). The four thrust areas are: (i) additive manufacturing of soft materials and integration with metallic and/or ceramic materials, (ii) flexible hybrid electronics, (iii) multifunctional composites
 for aerospace and biological applications, and (iv) scalable nano-manufacturing. These areas will be further supported by interdisciplinary faculty teams with deep knowledge in materials science, machinery, computations and simulations, big data processing, and machine learning. Of particular focus is multi-material 3D printing, which further enables the synergistic use of polymers and non-polymers in ways that best suit a specific application, maximizing the broader impact.