Kumar Shanmugam is currently a Reader in Composites and Additive Manufacturing in the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow. Prior to moving to Glasgow, he was an Associate Professor in the Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department at the Masdar Institute (now part of Khalifa University), Abu Dhabi. He obtained a Ph.D. in Solid Mechanics and Materials Engineering from University of Oxford in the Department of Engineering Science. His research interests revolve around Mechanics and Materials Design with a focus on multiscale and multifunctional attributes, particularly in the context of Additive Manufacturing for energy efficient and sustainable applications. He serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Adhesion and Adhesives and Scientific Reports. Kumar has edited a book, contributed 5 book chapters, and authored over 80 journal articles.

Title

Multifunctional Performance of Engineered Composites Enabled by Additive Manufacturing and Nanoengineering

Abstract

The emergence of micro-, nano-, and molecularly-tailored multi-material systems, particularly those enabled by additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, facilitates the design of new and enhanced functionalities. Building from advances in various disciplines including decades-long work on bulk microfiber heterogeneous composites, multi-material printing offers the possibility of cost-effective automation of the fabrication process and provides greater flexibility for locally tailoring the material architecture in three-dimensions. This talk will provide an overview of four such multidisciplinary research activities of my group enabled by AM and Nanoengineering: (i) enhanced performance of multilayers (compliance-tailoring, morphology-tailoring and surface-tailoring); (ii) biomaterials and bio-inspired design of materials (smart-nanocomposites for orthopedics, material-tailored nacreous composites, piezoresistive nanocomposites for sensing and 4D printing of morphing structures); (iii) multiscale and multifunctional fiber composites (hierarchical/multiscale composites, and camouflage composites) and (iv) architected and metamaterials (energy absorbing structures, batteries and supercapacitors, compact heat-exchangers, EMI shields, self-sensing scaffolds).  Manipulating materials at ever smaller scales, in 3D and 4D, allows for strain-, stress- and functional-engineering towards enhanced performance, but also opens new opportunities in fabrication. The convergence of emerging nanoscale AM techniques and the ability to design nano- and micro-architected hierarchical structures with ever-more-tightly controlled geometry will enable the creation of new classes of materials with unprecedented properties optimized for location-specific structural and/or functional requirements.