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Research

Advanced Materials and Manufacturing

UW Mechanical Engineering is helping to advance materials and manufacturing and strengthen the innovation ecosystem in the State of Washington and the nation. Washington is at the forefront of advanced manufacturing — using technology to improve products, services and processes. It has a growing health technology and medical device industry, as well as the most robust aerospace cluster in the world. Next-generation materials and systems will be knowledge-intensive and will require innovations that leverage emerging information and sensing technologies. The new processes and solutions being developed in our labs are helping to create a stronger, more sustainable, globally competitive manufacturing sector.

Key research areas

  • Additive and digital manufacturing
  • Advanced composite materials and structures
  • Biomanufacturing
  • Fracture mechanics and fatigue
  • Machine learning and big data
  • Modeling, simulation and sensors
  • Nanotechnology
  • Printed and flexible electronics
  • Robotics and human interaction
  • Self-assembly manufacturing

Research highlights

Boeing Advanced Research Collaboration pairs Boeing engineers with students and faculty to develop solutions for Boeing products in the areas of automation, robotics, composites and aircraft assembly.

PACCAR Advanced Research Center provides a lab for PACCAR-sponsored capstone projects with goals of expanding into a collaborative research space for students, faculty and PACCAR engineers.

The Washington Clean Energy Testbeds accelerate the development, scale-up and adoption of new energy technologies by providing labs for prototype manufacturing, testing and systems integration.

A consortium of academic institutions, aerospace companies and government agencies, the Center for Advanced Materials in Transport Aircraft Structures seeks solutions to the challenges associated with the application of composites and advanced materials for large commercial aircraft.

Award-winning student teams

Formula Motorsports designs, builds and competes small formula-style racecars from scratch. The team has had years of success with combustion vehicles and now focuses on electric.

UW Hyperloop designs, fabricates and competes small-scale pods that travel by magnetic levitation inside tubes at SpaceX headquarters.

WOOF 3-D Print Club provides emerging engineers with an environment centered on additive manufacturing.

Related News

In the background is some carbon fiber tape on a machine with text that says "composites - faster, smarter" on it and photos of five professors

Tue, 01/11/2022 | National Science Foundation

Composites: faster, smarter

A new NSF grant supports UW planning for an Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) on Data-driven High-rate Composites Manufacturing to partner with industry on high-performance, lightweight materials.

Headshots of Ayokunle Olanrewaju and Mehmet Kurt

Thu, 12/09/2021

Welcome new faculty

The ME department welcomes new faculty members for the 2021–2022 school year.

illustration of a 2x2 grid of squares with the left two squares dark grey and the light two squares light grey

Mon, 11/15/2021 | GeekWire

UW spinout aims to detect eye and body movement using sensors embedded in paper

Somalytics, a new startup spun out of research by ME Associate Professor Jae-Hyun Chung, has developed ultrathin, flexible sensors that are built from tiny carbon nanotubes embedded in paper that can detect eye and body movement.
 

A man with dark skin holds a rectangular black chip of carbon fiber material in the foreground and his masked face is out of focus in the background

Wed, 11/03/2021

Healable carbon fiber composite offers path to long-lasting, sustainable materials

A new paper describes a type of carbon fiber reinforced material that is as strong and light as traditionally used ones, but can be repeatedly healed with heat, reversing any fatigue and providing a way to break it down when it reaches the end of its life.