| Description | Using Radio Frequency Fields for Manufacturing Advanced Composites
Aniruddh Vashisth, Affiliate Assistant Professor, UW Mechanical Engineering
Tuesday, Nov 24, 2020 @ 3:30pm
Recording: www.youtube.com…
Abstract: Carbonaceous materials produce a strong, rapid heating response in the presence of a radio-frequency (RF) electromagnetic field because of their dielectric properties. These carbonaceous materials include nanofillers such as carbon nanotubes, carbon black, and graphene as well as microfillers such as carbon fibers. Specially designed RF applicators can be used to generate electric fields through composite materials to achieve targeted heating for curing, bonding or melting polymers. For aerospace applications, rapid processing of carbon fiber/epoxy pre-pregs can be achieved in a roll-to-roll process using RF fields. Commercially available T700 and IM7 carbon fibers embedded in thermosetting matrix can be heated at 70°C/s with only 25 W of RF power. Alternatively, automotive industry can exploit targeted heating to bond plastic-plastic substrates and metal-metal substrates with minimized distortion due to coefficients of thermal expansion mismatches.Bio: Aniruddh Vashisth is an Affiliate Assistant Professor in ME, starting full time in Jan 2021 at the University of Washington. He received his B.Tech degree from Indian Institute of Technology-BHU, India in 2012, his M.S. and Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University in Engineering Sciences and Mechanics in 2014 and 2018, respectively. Since 2018, he has been at Texas A&M for his postdoctoral training in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering (joint appointment). His main areas of interest in “Advanced Composites” are lightweight toughened composite materials, efficient manufacturing, reactive molecular dynamics, and nano-structure-property relationship. During his Ph.D. and postdoc, Aniruddh has worked closely with several national labs such as Army Research Lab (ARL) and NASA, and industrial partners such as Software for Chemistry and Materials (SCM), 3M, DuPont, Exxon, and ANSYS. * The seminar is part of the ME Graduate Seminar Series (ME 520) |
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