Research from UT/ORNL Governor’s Chair of Advanced Manufacturing Suresh Babu and his former student, Kevin Lamb (PhD ’23), is making waves in the international additive manufacturing (AM) community.
In March of 2023, Babu, Lamb, and their collaborators from Georgia Tech published research revealing that the empty spaces within AM steel components can be engineered to make the materials more impact-resistant than their fully solid counterparts. Their paper was published in Additive Manufacturing, the peer-reviewed journal run by America Makes, which is the largest public-private partnership for additive manufacturing in the US.
Related: Porous Steel May Be the Secret to Impact Resistance
Babu and Lamb’s results have now caught the attention of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), the world’s only professional group devoted to aerospace technology. Columnist Robert Coppinger has highlighted the porous steel study in the January 1, 2024 issue of the RAeS’s member magazine, Aerospace.
In the latest installment of his column Pushing the Envelope, which highlights technology “on the leading edge of aerospace,” Coppinger suggests that Babu and Lamb’s discovery could be used to craft impact-resistant satellites without the extra mass of conventional shielding.
Contact
Izzie Gall (865-974-7203, egall4@utk.edu)