Sep 20, 2016 | No Comments | By Sarah Preis
HEMI Fellows Vicky Nguyen, Kevin Hemker, Sung Hoon Kang and Mark Robbins, along with Prof. Peter Olmsted (Georgetown University) received a $1.6M Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer Our Future (DMREF) grant from the National Science Foundation.
According to the award documents, “This grant will provide new scientific understanding of the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) process and its effect on the underlying molecular structure and properties of 3D-printed polymers.” The funding program is part of the NSF and HEMI’s participation in the Materials Genome Initiative, designed to lead the global effort in the discovery, development, and deployment of new materials.
The team will perform fundamental research in order to understand how printing conditions affect the materials properties of polymers printed by FFF. This research will advance the application of FFF to structure-critical components, provide computational tools to accelerate the design of FFF printed parts, and develop the next generation 3D-printing technology for polymers – ultimately benefitting the US economy with knowledge gained.