Dr. Faisal's Faculty Website - Research Projects

RESEARCH PROJECTS

This section highlights the types of research projects Dr. Faisal supervises for senior design students (Engineering Technology programs). While fundamental in nature, the execution of the research tasks help students develop, practice, and demonstrate their problem solving, critical thinking, oral and written technical communication, teamwork, leadership, and project management skills. The students are able gather hands-on experiential learning experiences through training and operation of industry standard design, computational, and analytical software and measurement, testing, and characterization equipment. These help the students to build career ready skills transferrable to their future jobs, making them real-world ready engineering and technology professionals of the future.

Architected Cellular Structures

Polymeric architected cellular structures (PACS) can be designed to satisfy specific objectives through spatial organization of cellular structures. The flexibility to architect these structures through strategic placement of cellular ribs not only promotes localized weight reduction but also allows for optimized performance. A key advantage that AM has over the traditional processes is the ability to manufacture such structures which would have been otherwise impossible to produce due to their inherent cellular shape complexity.

Material Extrusion Additive Manufacturing

Among seven different categories of additive manufacturing (AM) processes as identified in ISO/ASTM 52900:2021, fused filament fabrication (FFF) falls in the category of material extrusion (ME), which is defined as an AM process where the material is selectively dispensed through a nozzle or orifice. The fundamental understanding of the material extrusion process and the effects of print path configuration on physical properties of the printed parts can provide significant insights to solving the challenges faced by this technology.

Sustainable Design and Manufacturing

While businesses have taken measures to shift from traditional ‘make-use-dispose’ mindset to offer sustainable products to consumers at a higher price premium in the 21st century, such efforts have not been recognized across all industries, nor have created long-term impact significant enough to promote mutually beneficial results. The integration of additive manufacturing technologies in product design, production process, and service delivery for polymer-based consumer products can help achieve sustainable and green supply chain of the future.