Advanced Manufacturing
At the forefront of maintaining American technological superiority in advanced manufacturing
Drawing on world-renowned talent, our faculty members incorporate expertise in hybrid, solid state and composites manufacturing, advanced metrology, and machine tools to diagnose and solve some of the most complex challenges for industry and government.
These efforts dovetail with our world-leading research in global supply chain, energy policy, environmental policy, global security, leadership and governance, and artificial intelligence.
Our Approach To Innovation
Advanced manufacturing research at UT is uniquely conducted in partnership with public, private, community, and industry partners to promote economic development, enhance national security, share knowledge, and engage a skilled and trained manufacturing workforce.
Through online and in-person programs, UT is directly addressing workforce development needs within the defense, aerospace, automotive, medical, consumer goods, and energy production industries.
Working collaboratively with external partners, our faculty and students conduct groundbreaking research in large area additive manufacturing for composites; metal additive manufacturing using powder bed processing, wire arc, and additive friction stir deposition techniques; convergent manufacturing of multi-material systems, hybrid automated manufacturing for industry 5.0; and contemporary design practices for additively-manufactured architecture.
Highlights
Circular Approach to Additive Manufacturing
Manufacturers have long been limited by a linear production model, which is often inefficient, expensive and wasteful. A paper co-authored by Neeraj Bharadwaj and James Rose investigates a circular “take-make-transmigrate” alternative in which products are designed specifically to have their ingredient materials reclaimed later to create additional products.
Army Collaboration
UT researchers are working to improve materials and manufacturing methods that could significantly advance capabilities of the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory, including developing the next generation of vehicles, increasing the distance of its long-range arsenal, and exploring designs for vertical lift vehicles of the future.
HAMMER Research Center
UT is a core member of The Hybrid Autonomous Manufacturing, Moving from Evolution to Revolution (HAMMER) Engineering Research Center, a multi-institutional research center focused on developing and deploying revolutionary intelligent autonomous manufacturing systems and educating a future manufacturing workforce.
CNS Partners with UT
Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), which operates both Y-12, located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, for the National Nuclear Security Administration, has a $9.5 million agreement allowing access to UT’s faculty, students, and research facilities to drive the implementation of new technologies for innovations applied to key national security mission areas.
Facilities & Initiatives
Comprehensive research capabilities include machining, additive, metrology, hybrid manufacturing modeling, digital fabrication, prototyping of advanced fiber reinforced composites, testing facilities for supply chain, production, and smart manufacturing algorithms, and a network devoted to entrepreneurship and commercialization of startup companies.
Talent
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Associate Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace & Biomedical Engineering
Developing new high-performance materials for additive manufacturing technologies, printable fiber-reinforced polymer and ceramic matrix composites, multi-material hybrid structures
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Professor, Chemistry
Organic photovoltaics and conjugated polymers, nanocomposites and block copolymers, lignin and renewable polymers
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Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace & Biomedical Engineering
Additive manufacturing of polymer and composite structures, new material development, melt flow characterization, optimizing process-structure-property relationships, tooling applications for large-scale additive manufacturing
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Associate Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace & Biomedical Engineering
Additive manufacturing, precision engineering, design of precision electro-mechanical systems and mechanisms, machine learning for manufacturing processes, metrology processes, opto-mechanics and opto-electronics, design and process optimization, hierarchical material design, material process-structure- property relationships, meso manufacturing
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Associate Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering
Markov decision processes, dynamic programming, predictive analytics, reinforcement learning, time series analysis, anomaly detection, applied probability and statistics
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Assistant Professor, Materials Science & Engineering
Phase transformations and microstructural evolution in metals and alloys, thermodynamic and kinetics, high-temperature materials, additive manufacturing
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Peebles Professor, IAMM Chair of Excellence, Civil & Environmental Engineering
Carbon fiber reinforced polymeric composites and sandwich structures, environmental degradation, and multi-scale mechanics, multi-axial stress-strain-time behavior of multi-phase and granular materials, non-invasive characterization and residual stress using neutron and x-ray tomography and diffraction, direct numerical simulations and porous media
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Associate Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace & Biomedical Engineering
Assembly, characterization, and application of biologically inspired and biomolecular material systems for engineered devices: biomimetic membranes for sensing, energy conversion, and actuation; uncovering membrane-nanomaterial interactions; soft, reconfigurable materials for neuromorphic computing
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Professor, Mechanical, Aerospace & Biomedical Engineering
Manufacturing, machining, vibrations, measurement, uncertainty analysis
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Assistant Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering
Machine learning and data science for complex systems in science and engineering modeling; control and optimization of time, event and decision-driven complex systems; statistical methods, mathematical optimization, and scientific computation; manufacturing, operations engineering, system dynamics and cyber-physical systems
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Professor, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Self-assembly in polymeric systems, physics of confined polymers, thermodynamics of polymer blends, architectural design of polymers, lithographic materials, coatings, thin film membranes, x-ray scattering methods
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UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair for Advanced Composites Manufacturing
Composites manufacturing, design and product development, concept to part, recycling and sustainable technologies, , hybrids, engineered plastics and high performance materials