(44h) Multifunctional and Stimuli-Responsive Structures with Unique Properties Enabled By Advanced Manufacturing of Polymer Composites

The future of engineered structures will require lightweight and multifunctional materials with properties that are tailored to specific applications. In this presentation, I will discuss recent discoveries in two topic areas related to advanced manufacturing of composites: self-folding origami and polymer lattice structures. Self-folding origami utilizes smart materials, such as shape memory polymers (SMPs), to convert planar sheets to three-dimensional structures. Smart materials make these structures responsive to externally applied stimuli, such as heat, sunlight, and electricity. Separately, advances in additive manufacturing enable precise manufacture of complex, three-dimensional (3D) lattice structures. These lattices utilize geometry to tailor the mechanical behavior of the structure to the specific application, and can provide unique properties, such as negative Poisson’s ratio. The embedding of conductive fillers into polymer filaments for 3D printing serve as a bridge between these two topics. My research group uses a combined computational and experimental approach to investigate smart, adaptive, and intelligent structures enabled by advanced manufacturing of polymers and polymer composites, with applications in aerospace, self-folding robotics, and actuators.