GOALI: Agile Fabrication of Gel-Cast Multicomponent Oxide Composites

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An innovative, agile approach for reliably fabricating tailored oxide composites for high temperature diesel engine applications is being developed under Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) program involving researchers at the University of Illinois and Caterpillar, Inc. This interdisciplinary university-industry program is aimed at establishing the underlying processing knowledge base needed to create the next generation of components for diesel engines with high thermal efficiency and reduced fuel consumption. The program involves the simultaneous development a new materials system, manufacturing process, and target application. The materials system consists of an oxide-based composite powder processed in an aqueous organic solution that undergoes gelation to form a rigid component upon casting. This system will serve as the feedstock in a robotically controlled extrusion apparatus, a solid freeform fabrication device, that allows for local compositional tailoring on length scales of the order of 100 um. The combination of these two emerging technologies, "gel" casting and solid freeform fabrication, will be studied here for the first time, and should yield dramatic improvements in the processing, design, and performance of advanced ceramics.