英国利兹大学3D打印方向博士后

Job Description

Funded PhD project: Worldwide (International, UK and EU)
Value: Funding covers the cost of fees and provides a maintenance of £14,553 for the 2017/18 academic year. Funding duration is 3 years.
Number of awards: Funding for this award is not guaranteed. This research project is in competition for scholarship funding with other projects and will be awarded on a competitive basis.

Project description
3D printing of Fibre Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites is being under considerable research recently, but very few developed technologies being commercialized due to the existing limitations. There are still a lot of problems to solve in order to refine the printing processes and the printed FRP composite parts/products are severely constrained by little understanding of the technology from materials, to manufacturing process and to structures. Most 3D printing processes are also time-consuming and it is difficult to print large scale composite parts/products. New printing technologies that is scalable and fast should be developed in order to become adopted by the industry. The development of such new technologies rely on the integrated consideration of the properties of the printable materials (i.e. fibre and polymer), structural performance of the printed parts as well as the robustness and efficiency of the printing system. One of the main challenges is that the printed composites usually have lower mechanical strength than the composites manufactured by conventional moulding technologies, which in some cases may not meet their functional requirements. This is mainly due to the voids introduced in the composites during the printing and the addition of fibre (carbon or glass) could further increase the porosity due to defects in the fibre/matrix interfacial bonding.
This project aims to use a particle methods based approach (a 2D integrated SPH-DEM approach has already been developed and needs to be extended to 3D) to model and optimize the 3D printing processes of FRP composites so as to reduce voids and improve fibre/matrix interfacial properties. Experimental testing and characterization of fibre, polymer and fibre/matrix interface will be carried out with results fed into the computational model. Existing printing processes (such as fused deposition method and direct write technique) will be modelled and optimal printing processes will be proposed. Based on the modelling and optimization, the project also has the potential to develop a new and innovative printing technique that can mitigate the limitations faced by the existing printing techniques, and on such occasion a small lab based printing device/prototype for composites will be developed.