Project description
Shrinking ink helps 3D print interlocking mechanisms to toughen virtually any material
Many materials in various components fail during their lifetime due to brittleness and cracking. On a microscopic level and lower, the ability to engineer interlocking mechanisms could significantly enhance materials’ toughness, strength, and performance. Imagine that there was a mechanism to do this that was largely independent of the material composition. The EU-funded SSTEEL project will develop such a mechanism that could apply equally to turbine blades as to fuel cells and photovoltaics. It will combine innovative fabrication technologies, including light-based additive manufacturing, with shrinking ink to print at resolution below that of the printer itself or fast consolidation of self-assembled micron-sized particles.
Objective
Brittleness limits the design and lifetime of some polymeric, metallic, and almost all ceramic materials in both structural and functional engineering applications, from the design of plane engine turbine blades to the newest solid-state electrolyte in batteries. This brittleness is intrinsically present in material composition that cannot plastically deform and make them sensitive to any defect introduced during their fabrication or usage.
The goal of this project is to produce small Scale interlocking mechanism for Strong and Tough mEtamatEriaL (SSTEEL) that will provide a material independent solution to brittleness. Interlocking mechanisms provide in theory one of the most efficient way to increase toughness by creating crack blocking compressive stresses in response to tensile stresses. Because a brittle material strength is inversely linked to its size, my team and I first objective will be to develop a new process to form interlocking mechanism based on micron-sized elements using a combination of light-based additive manufacturing, shrinking ink design to access sub-printer resolution, and fragmentation. The second objective will be to implement this mechanism at an even smaller scale using rational material selection, solid state chemistry, and colloidal processing to fabricate an interfacial binder for the elements. The fracture process of SSTEEL sample will span several length scales and a specific task will be to use a combination of image correlation and modelling to fully characterise the existing damaging mechanism and inform the improvement of future designs.
These new structures and concepts developed by my group will promote the development of tough structure for today’s and future structural and functional engineering applications by changing any brittle material to become strong, stiff, deformable, and reliable materials.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been validated by the project's team.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-STG - Starting Grant
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2020-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
SW7 2AZ London
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.