I will be presenting at San Francisco Bay Area IEEE Nano

 

Student Union building on map: “SU” at grid 3 – B/C              

ABSTRACT: Additive manufacturing (AM) is increasingly used for biomedical, automotive, space, defense, transportation, and consumer product applications.  Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is most common AM technique that can produce polymer, composite, metal, and ceramic materials. FDMed materials, however, contain pores between the deposited beads. Moreover, we can intentionally add pores to any kind of design to decrease weight or to add functionality, such as heat or mass transport. These pores reduce mechanical properties and introduce variations in mechanical properties. Despite the increasing use of FDM, the effect of porosity on the mechanical behavior of FDMed materials are unclear. Our recent work showed that intentional vibrations or biomimetic deposition path can be used to double mechanical reliability of FDMed polymers and polymer matrix composites.  In this talk, I will discuss the origins of the mechanical reliability in porous polymers and deviations from Weibull statistics. In addition, I will detail how we can improve strength and toughness of porous polymers. Biomimetic meso-structure and vibration-assisted FDM approaches will be described to improve reliability in FDMed materials.