Advanced

Manufacturing

Improving hybrid and soft materials and fabrication for novel functionality and sustainable processing, and enabling real-world advanced manufacturing through nanoscale welding, 3D printing strategies, and precision engineering for metals.

Back to Key Research Strengths

The college is focused on improving hybrid and soft materials and fabrication for novel functionality and sustainable processing, involving research and development at scales ranging in scope from nano-level to large-area production.

College projects involving the development of these materials directly impacts everything from energy generation to vehicular design and from health care to aerospace technologies.

In addition to every department having some impact on or use of this important field, the college has also partnered with several other colleges at UT, prominent national laboratories such as ORNL and Sandia, with numerous universities around the country, and with many US cabinet-level departments in pursuit of material development.

Facilities

Involved Faculty

Uday Vaidya

UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair
Lightweight Composites

Advanced composites; composite materials and manufacturing; engineered products; dynamic response; nondestructive evaluation; sustainable and green materials; composites design; process modeling and mechanics; composites recycling and sustainability; sound and vibration damping; hybrid materials; multi-scale, multi-functional, and nano-bio materials.

Uday Vaidya Profile

Dayakar Penumadu

Peebles Professor
Lightweight Composites

Carbon fiber reinforced polymeric composites and sandwich structures; environmental degradation; multi-scale mechanics; multi-axial stress-strain-time behavior of multi-phase and granular materials; non-invasive characterization and residual stress using neutron and X-ray tomography and diffraction; direct numerical simulations and porous media.

Dayakar Penumadu Profile

Gila Stein

Prados Professor
Novel Coatings and Polymer Films

Self-assembly in polymeric systems; physics of confined polymers; thermodynamics of polymer blends; architectural design of polymers; lithographic materials; coatings; thin film membranes; X-ray scattering methods.

Gila Stein Profile

Brett Compton

Assistant Professor
Large-area Additive Manufacturing

Developing new high-performance materials; developing the necessary fundamental understanding to enable the application of rigorous engineering principles to AM components; printable fiber-reinforced polymer and ceramic matrix composites; multi-material hybrid structures.

Brett Compton Profile

Chad Duty

Associate Professor
Large-area Additive Manufacturing

Polymer and composite structures; anisotropic mechanical behavior; new material development; melt flow characterization; optimizing process-structure-property relationships; development of Big Area Additive Manufacturing at multi-meter length scales; tooling applications for large scale additive manufacturing; development of novel coatings and base materials.

Chad Duty Profile

Tony Schmitz

Professor
Machine Tooling

Manufacturing; machining; vibrations; measurement; uncertainty analysis; physics-based machine learning; multi-scale manufacturing including micro- and nano-scales; structural dynamics; optics and photonics; precision design; heat transfer; uncertainty analysis; metrology.

Tony Schmitz Profile

Suresh Babu

UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair
3D Printing

Computational materials science; non–equilibrium phase transformations; thermo-mechanical-magnetic coupling effects; in-situ neutron and synchrotron diffraction tools; atom probe field ion microscopy and electron microscopy; laser surfacing for improvement of structural and biomaterial surfaces; novel phase transformation; weld microstructure modeling based on thermodynamics and kinetics; computer aided modelling.

Suresh Babu Profile

Andy Sarles

James Conklin Fellow
Advanced Materials

Assembly, characterization, and application of biologically inspired and biomolecular materials; biomimetic membranes for sensing; energy conversion and actuation; membrane-nanomaterial interactions; soft, reconfigurable materials for neuromorphic computing.

Andy Sarles Profile