Dr. Jonathan Raush and his team volunteered to assist Dr. Tanvir Faisal in production of nasal swabs and face shields over the summer of 2020 to help prevent shortages for medical professionals at Lafayette General Medical Center in Lafayette, LA.
Read more about the Engineering Department's role in medical supply production here!
Researchers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette will develop and analyze new 3-D printing materials and processes as part of a five-university project funded by a $20 million National Science Foundation grant.
The grant established the Louisiana Material Design Alliance, a consortium comprised of UL Lafayette, LSU, and Louisiana Tech, Southern and Tulane universities. The universities will conduct research that will be shared with federal agencies and industry to address a growing reliance on 3-D printing in manufacturing. UL Lafayette’s portion of the grant is $2.7 million.
“LAMDA provides a framework for research that will include opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students,” said Dr. Miao Jin, an associate professor in UL Lafayette’s School of Computing and Informatics. Jin is leading the University’s research for the project.
“LAMDA was also created to help universities enhance curriculums and hire faculty members to educate and train students who will help fill workforce needs. It’s a comprehensive, balanced approach designed to benefit the entire state,” she added.
3-D printing, which is also known as additive manufacturing, involves creating an object from a three-dimensional digital model by “laying down” many thin layers of a material, such as metal or plastic.
The process was developed in the 1980s, and became common in industrial manufacturing the following decade. It is becoming popular in many industries now, said Dr. Jonathan Raush, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
3-D printing is used to make everything from prosthetics and jewelry, to automobile parts and computer components. It is increasingly being implemented for biomedical, energy and aerospace applications.
“Accompanying the growth of 3-D printing is a need to develop materials with a broader range of compositions and properties that make them more durable, or lighter, or otherwise tailored to specific products and applications,” Raush explained.
UL Lafayette researchers will do that by integrating elements of computer science and engineering.
Researchers will design and analyze complex alloys and polymers. Complex alloys are created by combining two or more metallic elements. All plastics are comprised of polymers, which are long chains of bonded molecules. Not all polymers, however, are plastics.
Researchers will also test materials to see how they react to factors such as heat and pressure to gauge “fatigue” limits, or the highest level of stress a material can withstand.
The process of discovering optimal processes and new materials for specific functions will be guided by machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, Jin explained.
Machine learning models are capable of “learning” from data and making predictions – about which 3-D printing processes or new materials are best suited for a particular application, for example.
Researchers in the School of Computing and Informatics will develop machine learning models based on information gleaned from research into 3-D printing processes and materials.
“Components can be manufactured with more complicated shapes at much lower weights with 3-D printing than with traditional manufacturing methods. The problem is a lack of existing 3-D printing materials that provide a desired fatigue life. Data analysis and machine learning will guide us to new materials or processes that are optimal for specific applications,” Jin said.
Gabriela Petculescu is the Principal Investigator on a Major Research Instrumentation award from the National Science Foundation. The grant will enable the acquisition of a state-of-the-art Physical Properties Measurement System (PPMS), which will expand basic research in condensed matter physics at UL Lafayette. The instrument will allow precise investigations of phase transitions of solid state samples at low temperatures and over a range of magnetic fields.
This important award is the result of a wide collaborative effort. The Co-Principal Investigators are, in alphabetical order, Michalis Charilaou (Physics, ULL), Ling Fei (Chemical Engineering, ULL), Jonathan Raush (Mechanical Engineering, ULL), and Carl Richter (Geosciences, ULL). Senior Researchers on the project are Eric Ferre (Geosciences, ULL), Nicholas Jones (US Navy, NSWC-CD), Hui Yan (Chemistry, ULL), and Xiao-Dong Zhou (Chemical Engineering, ULL). In addition, researchers from LSU, NSWC-CD, Montana State University, University of Texas at Dallas, and LA-Tech are external collaborators and users.
The PPMS instrument will be hosted and maintained by the Institute of Materials Research and Innovation (IMRI) at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Congratulations John Hebert for successfully defending his thesis, "Using Multi-Dimensional Digital Image Correlation to Measure Mechanical Properties of Additively Manufactured and Anisotropic Materials"
