Dr. Liou’s Quad Chart
Research Projects
1. Digital Twin R&D for Metal Additive Manufacturing
- Digital Twin R&D for A Wire-Feed Deposition Process,” CAMT/GKN, 1/2021-12/2024.
- “Model Validation of Hybrid Directed Energy Deposition” CAMT/Boeing, 1/2021-12/2023.
- “Modeling and Process Planning Tool for Hybrid Metal Additive/Subtractive Manufacturing to Control Residual Stress and Reduce Distortion,” Product Innovation and Engineering /Navair STTR Phase II (Contract #N6833524C0215).
- “Secured Digital Twin for Additive Manufacturing,” PINE/Navy, 10/2024 to 4/2028.
2. High Throughput Mini-Tensile Testing System
- “Phase II and Phase IIA: Advanced Mechanical Testing (AMT) System for Highly Irradiated Materials,” Product Innovation and Engineering /Department of Energy STTR Phase IIA (Contract #DE-SC0018879), 2019-8/2024. Materials,” Product Innovation and Engineering /Department of Energy STTR Phase IIA (Contract #DE-SC0018879), 2019-8/2024.
Direct Metal Deposition of Functionally Gradient Materials
Project Description:
Many aerospace systems could benefit from materials with properties which are not ordinarily found in a single material. However, combining dissimilar materials can lead to incompatibilities which will destroy the system in operation. Functionally gradient materials (FGM) could meet these properties without the incompatibilities if the two materials can be slowly intermixed, either in small steps, or in a continuous fashion. Grading metal alloys can be problematic due to chemical reactions of the components.
Hybrid Metal Additive/Subtractive Manufacturing
Project Description:
To build complicated shapes without support structures is the major challenge for current layered manufacturing processes, especially for metals. This project was to effectively integrate hardware and software to make precision metal parts with 100% dense. The flexibility of the process can also be used to make very large and very small parts with multiple materials.
Automated Repair of Metal Defect Rework
Project Description:
Parts machined from high performance metals are very expensive, especially large precision parts. Many high performance metal parts users, such as the aerospace industry, mold/die casting industry, heavy machinery consumer etc., extend the service of these damaged parts by employing repair technology. While traditional manual welding is not reliable, hybrid additive manufacturing has shown good promise in repairing quality and speed.
Multi-Physics, Multi-Scale Modeling of Metal Additive Manufacturing Processes
Project Description:
Additive metals are a novel robust technique to manufacture aerospace parts. However, as the additive metals process is very complex and often operating at very high temperature, the resulting material behavior is hard to predict. This research is to investigate the prediction of the microstructure of the parts produced from the additive metal processes.