Project Grant FA86552517049

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...

This $305,939 project grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to develop a new class of fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) composites based on vitrimers. The research seeks to overcome challenges with FRP damage and poor recyclability by enabling the reversal of fatigue-induced damage through periodic heating. Key objectives include: Understanding the trade-off between increasing the glass transition temperature (Tg) and maintaining healability...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $375,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop a fundamental understanding of a new class of engineered materials - three-dimensional woven architected nano-composites. The research aims to validate the hypothesis that these printable nano-composites, with tunable electrical properties and complex nonlinear mechanical responses, can provide a new paradigm for...

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...

The National Science Foundation Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation awarded a $231,500 Project Grant to The Regents of the University of Colorado to support collaborative research titled "Mechanics of Structural Toughening in Sutured Composites." The award period is from October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2024. Under the grant, researchers at the University of Colorado will conduct engineering research focused on improving the understanding of how sutures can...

This five-year $565,337 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation, under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), will support fundamental research and education on electro-mechanical behaviors of soft conductive composites embedded with liquid metal fiber networks. The principal investigator will employ an integrated experimental-theoretical-computational approach to characterize network geometry evolution under extreme...

This $187,220 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to establish an optimal design framework for multi-functional composite structures. Leveraging kirigami cutting principles and snap-through multi-stability, the framework will expand performance capabilities for composites in aerospace, automotive, and robotics applications. Under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), which supports innovation and excellence in...

This Project Grant award, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Engineering (CFDA 47.041) program, supports fundamental research into the role of defects in the electrical actuation of elastomers (elastomer dielectrics) and explores strategies to mitigate their negative impact. The $325,555 award to Purdue University, with a period of performance from September 2023 to August 2026, aims to develop insights that could enable the adoption of low-cost polymer actuators for...

This Project Grant award for $313,087 from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will support a collaborative research initiative at the State University of New York at Binghamton to develop a physics-informed machine learning framework for tailoring the multidirectional mechanical properties of composite materials. The research aims to create a data-driven approach to understand the relationship between material architecture and mechanical behavior, facilitating...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation, under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), provides $481,998 to support research at the University of California, Berkeley on developing a new additive manufacturing process for multi-material and multi-functional part fabrication. The principal investigator will conduct fundamental research into a charge-programmed additive microfabrication technique to rapidly pattern...