This $578,437 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at Texas A&M University to develop fast manufacturing techniques for high-performance thermoplastic polymer composites. The research aims to engineer the crystallinity of these composites during fast processing to achieve high stiffness, strength and toughness concurrently. Nanomaterials consisting of cellulose nanocrystals and graphene nanoplatelets will be used to control crystallinity without hazardous solvents...
The National Science Foundation awarded a $216,000 Project Grant to Southern Illinois University Carbondale under the Engineering (47.041) federal grant program. The two-year project will fund research to understand the thermomechanical response of sandwich structures with triply periodic minimal surface core lattice architectures. The university researchers will use numerical simulations and experimental testing to examine how structured core designs, including gyroid, diamond, and primitive...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under CFDA 47.041 - Engineering program provides $328,133 to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) to conduct research aimed at enabling the manufacture of high-performance thermoplastic composite structures through faster and less energy-intensive processes. The research project, which is a collaboration between UCSD, Michigan Technological University, NASA, and the University of Wuppertal in Germany, seeks to develop a...
This $600,000 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at the University of Southern California to develop new manufacturing methods for recycling post-consumer carbon fiber composite materials. The research aims to preserve the value of continuous carbon fibers and recover the polymer matrix from aircraft and other composites currently buried in landfills or subjected to pyrolysis. The project will study techniques to remanufacture recycled carbon fibers and polymer matrix...
This Project Grant award of $267,524 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports research to enable the manufacture of high-performance thermoplastic composite structures through faster and less energy-intensive processes. The research, conducted by an international team from the University of California-San Diego, Michigan Technological University, NASA, and the University of Wuppertal in Germany, aims to develop a physics-based, multiscale modeling...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Integrative Activities program (CFDA 47.083) provides $299,431 to the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) to develop characterization techniques for determining the rate and temperature-dependent properties of polymer matrix composite (PMC) materials. The goal is to enable accurate simulations of PMC behavior under dynamic loading conditions, such as vehicle crashes and aircraft impacts, to support the widespread...
This Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program, supports research into developing ultra-high-strength carbon nanofibers through the process of pyrolysis. The $390,152 award, effective September 1, 2024 through August 31, 2028, will be carried out by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (Tees). The key objectives of this research project are to investigate the impact of defects, such as...
This five-year, $616,685 National Science Foundation project grant will fund research at Arizona State University to elucidate the synergistic effects of composition, porosity, and structural rigidity on the mechanics of metallic organic frameworks (MOFs). MOFs are porous hybrid materials consisting of metallic ions connected by organic linkers to form a vast reinforced network with potential for industrial CO2 capture, separation, and storage applications. The grant will support an integrated...
This $600,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will support research to develop an experimental-computational framework for characterizing damage mechanisms in advanced fiber-reinforced composite materials. The primary objectives are to leverage digital image correlation and discontinuous finite element methods to reconstruct the full-field evolution of material properties and damage in mesostructured composites. This research...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program provides $605,237 to Emory University to conduct research on acoustic wave propagation across polymer interfaces. The project aims to map the effects of polymer-polymer interfaces on local material properties, particularly the range and magnitude of changes in glass transition temperature and dynamics. Key activities include: Measuring shear wave propagation across...