Research Strengths
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.
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.
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.
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.
Gila Stein
Prados ProfessorNovel 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.