Expedited Award for Novel Research: Exploratory Research for New Unit Operations

由于高温、高强度金属及其合金、陶瓷和复合材料等新的工程材料的出现，需要开发新的制造工艺，因为传统方法的加工可能过于昂贵和/或困难。新流程的开发需要了解每个流程的能力和局限性。目前用于加工难加工材料的一些成功的工艺在性质上是混合的，涉及两个或更多工艺的组合。该项目涉及利用形态分析方法确定新的制造工艺的方法的发展。它涉及到二维矩阵的发展，基本类型的能量沿着一个轴，而待处理的材料在另一个轴上。矩阵中的方框将填入已知的单位运算。矩阵中的差距代表了潜在的新业务。这一领域的研究可以促进传统材料和先进材料的新的和创新的经济加工的发展。

The advent of new engineering materials such as high- temperature, high-strength metals and their alloys; ceramics; and composites necessitated the development of new manufacture processes as processing by conventional methods can be too expensive and/or difficult. The development of new processes requires knowledge of each of the processes with respect to their capabilities and limitaitons. Some of the sucessful processes used currently for processing difficult-to-process materials are hybrid in nature which involves a combination of two or more processes. This project deals with the development of a methodology for the identification of new manufacturing processes using the method of morphological analysis. It involves the development of two-dimensional matrices with the basic type of energy along one axis and the materials to be processed on the other. The boxes in the matrix will be filled in with the known unit operations. The gaps in the matrix represent potential new operations. Research in this area can lead to the development of new and innovative processing economically of both conventional and advanced materials.