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Carbon Fiber Conference Welcomes UT Engineering Students

Students participating in the Carbon Fiber Conference Student Showcase.

The Composites World 2019 Carbon Fiber conference recently took place in Knoxville, and, for the first time, Tickle College of Engineering students were part of the festivities.

The conference is an annual event that brings together leading researchers in composites manufacturing from businesses, laboratories, and universities around the world.

UT’s students were given a portion of the even hall to display posters related to their work, with 16 presentations made in total.

Governor’s Chair in Advanced Composites Manufacturing Uday Vaidya served as advisor for the following people and their projects:

  • Shailesh Alwekar, Continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic (CFRTP) tape over molded of long fiber thermoplastic (LFT)
  • Hicham Ghossein, The pathway from academia to industry
  • Nitilaksha Hiremath, Benchmark property evaluation of textile grade carbon fiber-based composites for automotive applications
  • Jon Bigelow, Lightweight sheet molding compound (SMC) based composites for automotive seat back rest
  • Komal Kooduvalli, Life cycle assessment capabilities and representative IACMI projects
  • Surbhi Kore, Discontinuous aligned carbon fiber intermediates for automotive and related applications
  • Kaustubh Mungale, Optimizing compounding of NDESB polycarbonate bonded magnets in a twin-screw extruder
  • Vidyarani SD, Improving the adhesion of glass/polypropylene and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) surfaces by open air plasma
  • Ryan Spencer, Nondestructive evaluation of lightning strike composites and additive manufactured structures
  • Sarah Wheeler and Alex Stiles, Automated mold-less structural fiber winding for large structures
  • Pritesh Yeole, Mechanical characterization of high-temperature carbon fiber-polyphenylene sulfide composites for large area extrusion deposition process

Fred N. Peebles Professor and JIAM Chair of Excellence Dayakar Penumadu advised the following people and their projects:

  • Phillip Barnett, Discontinuous carbon fiber thermoplastic organosheets for structural automotive composites
  • Hannah Maeser, Thermal digital image correlation and its applications to multiple scales of discontinuous platelet carbon fiber composites
  • Darren Foster, UTK smartjoint for optimizing adhesively bonded joining of hybrid materials for automotive applications
  • Josh Crabtree, Multiscale investigation of textile carbon fiber composites
  • Stephen Young, Tensile properties of textile carbon fiber composites

More about the conference, including selected presentations, can be viewed on the conference’s website.