Planning I/UCRC University of Connecticut: Center for Science of Heterogeneous Additive Printing of 3D Materials (SHAP3D)

添加剂制造技术广泛应用于各种行业，包括消费品、汽车、医疗、航空航天和机械。添加剂制造业在2015年超过50亿美元，预计在未来五年内将超过200亿美元。在世界各国，它已经成为一个竞争激烈的研究领域。为了确保美国在这一新兴领域的全球领先地位源于美国，学术合作伙伴(目前包括佐治亚理工学院(GT)、康涅狄格大学(UConn)和马萨诸塞大学洛厄尔分校(UML))联合成立了3D材料异质添加剂打印科学中心(SHAP3D)。SHAP3D将通过解决基本研究挑战来满足行业对异质材料3D打印的商业需求，从而服务于行业、政府和学术界的不同利益。SHAP3D将发展对基本工艺-结构-性能关系的关键和必要的洞察，以预测和控制3D打印的不同材料的集成。SHAP3D的工作将是至关重要的，因为该行业采用3D打印进行产品原型、工具和更大批量的制造，并产生三个具体的经济结果。首先，该中心将追求性能更高的材料和复合材料，使多样化和轻量化的产品能够将总生命周期成本和环境足迹降至最低。第二，为了最大限度地减少加工成本，中心将探索更优化和更并行的工艺，以更快、更高分辨率打印产品。第三，SHAP3D将研究界面物理和设计概念，以整合不同的材料，以促进多功能部件/产品，扩大3D打印应用的数量，并扩大市场规模。与行业伙伴的积极合作将确保与未来劳动力的教育和培训相关，以加快3D打印方法的采用和整合到制造过程中。这三所院校将设立一个奖学金基金，专门用于招收不同类型的研究生。这笔奖学金的一部分将发放给少数族裔服务机构(包括社区学院)中代表性不足的学生。康涅狄格州支持航空航天和造船行业的大量公司将受益于I/UCRC。康涅狄格州S添加剂制造创新中心向120多家公司和政府机构介绍了最先进的添加剂制造技术。隶属于这个I/UCRC的教职员工还参加了许多针对学生、行业和普通公众的成熟的外展计划。例如，2015年与非营利组织康涅狄格州青年论坛合作在康涅狄格州大学举办了添加剂制造研讨会。该论坛通过民间对话、服务学习和领导力发展活动，增强700多名城市、郊区和农村青年的能力。在该奖项的支持下，康涅狄格州大学团队将与康涅狄格州大学工程多样性计划和学生主导的3D打印俱乐部密切合作，启动新的教育推广计划，特别是针对哈特福德和威利曼蒂市中心少数民族人口较多的高中。除了通过现有的NSF REU和Bridge项目提供行业研讨会和相关项目外，康涅狄格州大学的团队还将与当地行业合作伙伴和专业组织协调，创建新的高级设计项目和合作/实习机会。SHAP3D中心将进行研究，以了解不同材料的合成、性能和加工，以便集成到复杂的、可添加制造的产品中。SHAP3D的工作设想将包括许多不同的添加剂印刷方法，如熔融沉积建模(FDM)、选择性激光烧结(SLS)、立体平版印刷(SLA)、聚/喷墨和其他添加剂方法。该中心将进行基础材料建模和加工研究，以建立并向学生和实践者翻译经过验证的材料和过程。拟建的中心将有助于：(I)合理设计和创造新的材料原料；(Ii)了解材料特性、规程和设计规则，这些材料特性、规程和设计规则必须加以表征和制定，以优化工艺并预测由多种聚合物材料(例如，不同的组成材料、填料/添加剂和界面)制成的产品和部件的性能。康涅狄格州大学拟议的技术活动将利用工程学院(SOE)和材料科学研究所(IMS)的现有优势。四个主要领域是：(I)软材料的添加制造以及与金属和/或陶瓷材料的集成；(Ii)灵活的混合电子学；(Iii)用于航空航天和生物应用的多功能复合材料；以及(Iv)可扩展的纳米制造。这些领域将得到在材料科学、机械、计算和模拟、大数据处理和机器学习方面拥有深厚知识的跨学科教员团队的进一步支持。特别关注的是多材料3D打印，它进一步实现了聚合物和非聚合物的协同使用，以最适合特定应用的方式，最大化了更广泛的影响。

Additive manufacturing technologies are widely used in a variety of industries including consumer products, automotive, medical, aerospace, and machinery. The additive manufacturing industry exceeds $5 billion in 2015 and is expected to top $20 billion within the next five years. It has become an extremely competitive area of research in countries around the world. To ensure US' global leadership in this emerging field originated from the US, academic partners (currently including Georgia Institute of Technology (GT), University of Connecticut (UConn), and University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML)) have come together to create the Center for Science of Heterogeneous Additive Printing of 3D Materials (SHAP3D). SHAP3D will serve the diverse interests of industry, government, and academia by addressing fundamental research challenges to meet the commercial needs of industry for 3D printing of heterogeneous materials. SHAP3D will develop the critical and necessary insight into fundamental processing-structure-property relationships to predict and control the integration of diverse materials for 3D printing. The work of SHAP3D will be critical as the industry adopts 3D printing for product prototyping, tooling, and higher volume manufacturing with three specific economic outcomes. First, the Center will pursue higher performance materials and composites that enable diverse and lighter weight products to minimize total life cycle costs and environmental footprint. Second, in order to minimize processing costs, the Center will explore more optimal and parallel processes to more quickly print products with higher resolution. Third, SHAP3D will investigate interfacial physics and design concepts for integrating dissimilar materials to facilitate multi-functional components/products, broaden the number of 3D printed applications, and increase market size. Active collaboration with industry partners will ensure relevance to education and training of the future workforce to expedite the adoption and integration of 3D printing methods into manufacturing processes. The three institutions will create a scholarship fund specifically for the recruitment of diverse graduate students. A portion of this scholarship fund will be directed to underrepresented students from minority serving institutions, including community colleges. A large number of companies in Connecticut supporting the aerospace and shipbuilding sectors will benefit from the I/UCRC. UConn?s Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center (AMIC) has introduced state-of-the-art additive manufacturing to over 120 companies and government agencies. Faculty members affiliated with this I/UCRC have also participated in many well-established outreach programs targeting students, industry, and the general public. For instance, an additive manufacturing workshop was held at UConn in 2015 in collaboration with non-profit 
Connecticut Youth Forum. This Forum empowers over 700 urban, suburban and rural youth through civil dialogue, service learning, and leadership development activities. With the support of this award, the UConn team will work closely with the Engineering Diversity Program and student-led 3D Printing Club at UConn to initiate new educational outreach programs, especially targeting high schools in inner city Hartford and Willimantic with high minority populations. In addition to offering industry workshops and relevant projects through existing NSF REU and BRIDGE programs, the UConn team will also coordinate with local industry partners and professional organizations to create new senior design projects and co-op/internship opportunities.The SHAP3D Center will perform research to understand the synthesis, properties, and processing of heterogeneous materials for integration into complex, additively manufactured products. The work SHAP3D envisions would encompass many different additive printing methods, such as fused deposition modeling (FDM), selective laser sintering (SLS), stereolithography (SLA), poly/ink jet, and other additive approaches. The Center will perform fundamental material modeling and processing research to establish and translate validated materials and processes to students and practitioners. The proposed center will enable: (i) the rational design and creation of new material feedstocks and, (ii) the understanding of material properties, protocols, and design rules that must be characterized and developed to optimize the process and predict the properties of products and parts created from multiple polymer materials (e.g., different constituent materials, fillers/additives, and interfaces). The proposed technical activities at UConn will draw from the existing strengths of the School of Engineering (SoE) and the Institute of Materials Science (IMS). The four thrust areas are: (i) additive manufacturing of soft materials and integration with metallic and/or ceramic materials, (ii) flexible hybrid electronics, (iii) multifunctional composites
 for aerospace and biological applications, and (iv) scalable nano-manufacturing. These areas will be further supported by interdisciplinary faculty teams with deep knowledge in materials science, machinery, computations and simulations, big data processing, and machine learning. Of particular focus is multi-material 3D printing, which further enables the synergistic use of polymers and non-polymers in ways that best suit a specific application, maximizing the broader impact.