Jun Li
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach, FL·Engineering
3D printing is moving from prototypes to real products, but many 3D-printed plastic parts crack and fail under load, which keeps them out of load-bearing uses. Adding particles or fibers to the printing filament can make parts stronger.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
- Topics
additive manufacturing
3D printing
polymer composites
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Develop direct mesoscale simulations of 3D printing that couple heat, mechanical forces, chemistry and fluid-structure interactions, to show how temperature gradients and melting between filaments and reinforcing fibers lead to micro-cracks.
- Build multiscale fracture models that use machine learning trained on micro-crack simulations, together with phase-field models that predict larger cracks, and validate them with in-situ process monitoring and multiscale experiments.
- Create a model-based uncertainty quantification protocol that organizes simulations and experiments to validate the models, test parameter sensitivity and measure variation in printed polymer composites.
- Quantify how printing process parameters relate to the internal structure, properties and fracture performance of particle- and fiber-reinforced 3D-printed polymer composites.
More about the research
Progress is slowed by how variable the printing process is, so development still relies largely on trial and error. This project proposes a science-based alternative that pairs computer simulations with a carefully chosen set of experiments. The goal is to understand how fracture starts and spreads across scales in 3D-printed polymer composites, and how much the results vary from part to part.
Why it matters
Many 3D-printed plastic parts are too prone to cracking for load-bearing use. A tested understanding of how printing settings control fracture could replace trial-and-error development of reinforced polymer filaments. This could help manufacturers across many industries print stronger, more reliable functional components.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ahmad Najafi
Drexel University, PA·Engineering·Early-career
Create a 3-M (multiphysics, multiscale, multifunctional) optimization framework that designs a material's constituents and internal architecture at the same time while balancing conflicting functions.
Steven Kurtz
Drexel University, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop and optimize a hybrid additive manufacturing process for carbon-fiber-reinforced polyaryletherketones, combining 3D printing with heat-and-pressure consolidation, using design of experiments.
Yiliang Liao
Iowa State University, IA·Engineering
Determine how the evolving, uneven thermal environment of a hot liquid support bath controls polymer diffusion and interlayer fusion in embedded printing, using deep-neural-network molecular dynamics, phase-field modeling, and experiments.
The school
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach: 5 labs on PI Pages, $35M a year on research, 27 research doctorates a year.
More about Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach
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