Dr. Xin Liu’s, Assistant Professor, Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Department, team won first place in Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at Innovation Day 2022. The winning project is “Design and Manufacturing of Ultralight Lattice Metamaterials Inspired by Nature”. Dr. Liu’s team includes UTARI research assistants, Noor Alyasiri, Clay Gifford, and Abhimanyu P Patel.
The material properties of beam lattice metamaterials are highly customizable by tailoring beam connections (i.e., topology), showing promising properties in many engineering areas. “We are looking for a different path to improve material performance.” Dr. Liu says. “Leverage on multiscale modeling, machine learning, and additive manufacturing, we are exploring the potential benefits of design and fabrication of individual beams with unconventional cross-sectional shapes. This will bring tremendous opportunities to further improve material stiffness, strength, and energy absorption with a reduced weight.” This undergraduate project designed a bio-inspired beam cross-section with a much-improved beam bending stiffness and the results will be further applied to understand the deformation and failure of the metamaterials with irregular beam cross-sections.
Innovation Day celebrates and showcases the innovative, transformative research and undergraduate capstone projects being done by College of Engineering students. In addition to showcasing the outstanding work of student researchers, the event is an opportunity for industry and the community to become more involved and aware of the quality of UTA’s engineering students as they prepare to enter the workforce.