Advanced Techniques on the Applications, Material Design, and Process of Additive Manufacturing

Nien-Ti Tsou, National Chiao Tung University
Shao-Ju Shih, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
Wing Kam Liu, Northwestern University

CAdditive manufacturing has made a huge impact in the field of engineering and been widely applied to bone implants, scaffolds, mandibular reconstructions and complex aerospace/automobile components in the recent years. Many advanced materials, such as bioactive or biodegradable 3D printed powders, have been developed. Their material properties and behavior of their applications can be characterized and measured. These required many advanced synthesis techniques, such as spray pyrolysis, spray drying methods, as well as various of advanced characterization techniques, such as x-ray synchrotron and micro-CT.

The performance of the 3D printed applications is equally important and dominated by their functional design, and printing process parameters. These factors can be optimized or designed by numerical methods or simulation techniques. For example, the geometry of dental implants can be designed by the topological optimization based on the biomechanics; the printing processes, including powder paving, microfluidic flow, heat transfer, melting, solidification and evaporation, can be modeled by various simulation techniques, such as discrete element method and volume of fluid method. In this mini-symposium, we aim to provide a forum to present and exchange research results featuring contributions on advances materials, synthesis, characterization and simulation techniques, giving in-depth insight on the field of additive manufacturing.