PhD Student: Shitong Zhou

Supervisor: Prof. Eduardo Saiz

Sponsor: CASC Industrial Consortium

The project is to investigate embedded 3D printing multimaterial composites on ceramics, especially printing fibers inside ceramics and complex structures. The chosen healable matrix for printing is a Pluronic-based slurry. The viscosity of this slurry is sensitive to the temperature, which has good mobility at low temperature, so it flows around the fibers and fills the voids between fiber and matrix. As an initial proof-of-concept, steel fibers are printed in Alumina slurry and the effect of rheological behavior in this system has been investigated. Drying is the biggest problem in this kind of hydrogel-based system and will be improved by a deep investigation of tomography during the drying period. And microstructure of the samples after sintering will be analyzed and tailored to improve the interface between fibers and matrix and the mechanical performance. This kind of embedded 3D printing will be further applied on other materials to broadening the application.