LEAP-HI: GOALI: Accelerating Design for Additive Manufacturing of Smart Multimaterial Devices

增材制造（AM），也称为3D打印，是直接从数字文件逐层制作定制零件的过程，而不需要特定零件的工具。与传统制造工艺相比，增材制造可以缩短交货时间、减少浪费、避免供应链中断，并实现前所未有的功能、设计自由度和定制水平，为从航空航天系统到医疗设备等行业带来巨大好处。这个美国繁荣、健康和基础设施领先工程（LEAP-HI）学术与工业联络机会（GOALI）项目支持基础研究，为智能设备建立新的增材制造能力，这些设备可以为个体患者快速定制，并随着患者需求的变化实现工程形状的变化。该项目高度集成的性质要求同时解决材料科学、设计工程和增材制造方面的挑战，以实现先进智能设备的强大制造——预计到2025年市场规模将达到982亿美元——从而提高美国在从医疗设备到先进电子产品等交叉行业的竞争力。此外，该项目为性别研究学者提供了一个机会，研究pi全女性团队之间的合作过程，更好地了解技术和科学进步是如何实现的，以及如何支持任何性别的技术领导者追求类似的目标。尽管最近在增材制造技术和智能设备和活性材料（包括可打印材料）的研究方面取得了进展，但很少有研究人员展示了智能多材料结构和设备的增材制造。该奖项提供了一个变革性的机会，通过仔细整合处理、建模、设计和表征，以及通过研究多个焦点之间的复杂相互作用，来解决这一知识差距。基础调查包括：(1)通过填料分级开发具有显著增强性能的新型聚合物基活性材料；(2)开发一种新型增材制造工艺，集成多种材料并根据需求对其进行功能分级；(3)开发一种高效、稳健的设计方法，考虑到工艺的可变性；(4)对女性领导团队进行人种学分析，该团队有可能对机械工程领域产生更广泛的积极影响。这一成果有望创造出可定制的智能设备，并由医疗等领域的行业合作伙伴进行商业化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D Printing, is the process of making customized parts layer-by-layer, directly from a digital file without the need for part-specific tooling. Relative to conventional manufacturing processes, AM can shorten lead times, reduce waste, avoid supply chain disruptions, and enable unprecedented levels of functionality, design freedom, and customization with significant benefit to industries ranging from aerospace systems to medical devices. This Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure (LEAP-HI) Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) project supports fundamental research to establish new AM capabilities for smart devices that can be rapidly customized for individual patients and enable engineered changes in shape as the patients’ needs change. The highly integrated nature of this project requires addressing challenges in materials science, design engineering, and AM simultaneously to enable robust manufacturing of advanced smart devices–projected to be a $98.2 billion market by 2025–thus improving US competitiveness in crosscutting industries from medical devices to advanced electronics. Moreover, the project provides an opportunity for a gender studies scholar to study the process of collaboration among the all-female team of PIs and develop a better understanding of how technological and scientific advances are achieved and how to support technical leaders of any gender as they pursue similar goals. Despite recent advances in AM technologies and the growth of research into smart devices and active materials, including printable ones, few researchers have demonstrated AM of smart multimaterial structures and devices. This award provides a transformative opportunity to address this gap in knowledge by careful integration of processing, modeling, design, and characterization, and by investigating the complex interactions between multiple foci. Fundamental investigations include: (1) development of new polymer-based active materials with significantly enhanced performance via gradation of fillers, (2) development of a novel AM process that integrates multiple materials and functionally grades them on demand, (3) development of an efficient, robust design method that accounts for process variability, and (4) an ethnographic analysis of the female leadership team with the potential to positively impact the field of mechanical engineering more broadly. The results are expected to enable the creation of customizable smart devices that can be commercialized by industry partners in medical and other fields.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.