Engineering Multifunctional Materials and Composites through Additive Manufacturing and Nanoengineering

Shanmugam Kumar (University of Glasgow, School of Engineering)

Friday 12th April 13:00-14:00 Maths 311B

Abstract

The rise of micro-, nano-, and molecularly-tailored multimaterial systems, particularly through additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, has paved the way for designing novel and improved functionalities. Leveraging advancements across disciplines, including extensive work on bulk microfibre heterogeneous composites, multimaterial and multifunctional 3D and 4D printing technologies present opportunities for cost-effective automation in fabrication. These technologies also offer greater flexibility in locally tailoring material architecture and properties in three dimensions. This presentation will provide an overview of our group's cross-disciplinary research activities, covering: (i) tailored multilayers (compliance-tailoring, morphology-tailoring and surface-tailoring); (ii) nature-inspired materials (nacreous materials and camouflage composites); (iii) nanocomposites and 4D printing (nano-biocomposites, piezoresistive self- sensing nanocomposites and morphing structures); (iv) multiscale and multifunctional fibre composites (hierarchical/multiscale composites and self-sensing cellular composites); and (v) architected materials and metamaterials (2D and 3D mechanical and multifunctional architected lattices for energy-absorbing structures, smart medical devices, energy storage, thermal management, and EMI shields). Manipulating matter at relevant length scales, in 3D and 4D, enables strain-, stress-, and functional-engineering towards enhanced performance, but also opens new opportunities in fabrication. The convergence of emerging micro- and nano-scale AM techniques, as well as the ability to design nano- and micro-architected hierarchical structures with more tightly controlled geometry, will allow the development of new material classes with unprecedented properties optimised for location-specific structural and/or functional requirements suitable for bio, defence, energy, automotive, and aerospace applications. The talk will discuss the challenges for statistical inference, machine learning and novel digital twin technologies, and will be of interest to all statistics staff that are interested in widening their collaboration portfolio.

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