黑料福利网

By combining original scientific insights with established knowledge in materials processing and performance, the collaboration aims to deliver reproducible, industrially viable manufacturing methods. The project鈥檚 scope and ambition are reflected in the broad interdisciplinary commitment within 黑料福利网 and the close cooperation with Motion Imager鈥檚 development team.

Aligning material design and manufacturability

Material discovery and engineering without taking the manufacturing process into account unavoidably leads to scrap, compromised functional range, lower performance yield, high carbon-intensive manufacturing and operation, intractable native material property tunability, and more. The objective of the project is to realize as-manufactured material properties that are aligned with the current as-designed material specifications, thereby ensuring full structural functionality without compromising manufacturability.

Imagine the fabrication of an uncompromised functional design of a micro-thruster for satellite and space shuttles, which pushes the material鈥檚 mechanical, optical, thermal and chemical properties and tolerances to extreme limits. This is required to ensure the satellite launched in space moves within the designated orbital trajectory and speed, for the duration of its stay. While ensuring the chambers holding various kinds of propellants like liquid oxygen and methane mixing generates the requisite thrust, it depends on the materials hydrodynamic and heat transfer, leading to pressure loss in the thrust. Similarly, the oxidization of propellants reaction may impact the materials composition, resulting in changing wall friction due to corrosion or oxidization and impact the propellant mixing to generate the required energy to thrust the satellite in a specific direction and at a specific speed.

To meet the many requirements from fabrication process and materials selection, it requires a multi-thickness wall below tens of micrometer, multi material composition for different chambers, non-planar shape, with micro-scale surface roughness and intricate internal scaffolds leading to the ideal functional structural generative design as is the one in fig 1.

This is an example of the kind of structures that can be fabricated using the volumetric additive manufacturing the team is working on. The manufacturing process gets them much closer to mimic bio-structures with a Buy-to-Fly ratio closer to 1, significantly reducing waste. In contrast, all other existing traditional manufacturing like casting, molding, forging and printing or layer-based AM result in a Buy-to-Fly ratio of 2 (for basic geometric structures), and for intricate structures with gradient mechanical and complex geometries, this ratio can attain values as high as 20.

In contrast, a non-optimal compromised and approximated micro thruster that is being fabricated by partial AM and other traditional  manufacturing methods looks like fig 2.

Micron-precision at production scale

The project aims to demonstrate a technological breakthrough in manufacturing complex geometric structures with surface smoothness or roughness at the micron scale and below, including intricate features such as non-planar and hanging structures without the need for fixtures. It targets mechanical properties that are currently inaccessible, while retaining and enhancing functionality through microscale material composition and materials engineering, and achieving reproducibility for series manufacturing. The realization of this technological breakthrough is crucial to solving existing challenges and enabling new capabilities across a wide range of industries, including automotive, aerospace, space, biomedical, and soft robotics.

The Terra incognita gap between a scientific breakthrough to technological breakthrough requires a joint translational development and demonstrator work between private and academic scientists and engineers. This collaboration brings all the key pre-requisites and commitment in realizing the goal of an initial version of standardized techniques, processes, computational engines and tools, working in a structured and systematic workflow.

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