Postdoctoral Researcher
Project: Manufacturing of high-performance polymeric materials and study of their structure-property relationships for aerospace applications
LinkedIn shikha.singh [at] mcgill.ca (Mail)
Supervisor: Prof. Pascal Hubert
Sponsors: McGill University, Hutchinson, CREPEC, NSERC
There is a growing interest in manufacturing lightweight and robust polymeric materials for aerospace applications. In this context, additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing is energizing the field of materials science to design new polymer-based materials. According to Wohlers Report 2021: despite COVID-19, the 3D printing market has gained an increment of 7.5% to reach a value of 12.8 billion in 2020. AM has immense potential to fabricate various 3D geometries including complex geometrical structures and functions that can be customized, distributed and on-demand production of the part. Main steps of the AM process have been presented in the figure 1.
The objective of this research work is to develop a novel polymer-based materials using AM that can meet the stringent requirements of the aerospace industry. To accomplish this goal both the materials and production processes must be well-understood. There are several aspects which need to be fine-tuned. For instance, cost, properties of the polymeric materials; specifically, mechanical properties, thermal behaviors, fire-resistance, moisture sensitivity etc., and processing parameters. This complicated manufacturing has led to focus on AM from the laboratory to the model shop and finally to the floor of factory.
Figure 1 . Schematic representation of the typical additive manufacturing processing steps Schematic representation of the typical additive manufacturing processing steps