MMAE Seminar Series: Amir Mostafaei

The Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering presents the 2024–2025 seminar series featuring Amir Mostafaei, assistant professor of mechanical, materials and aerospace engineering at Illinois Tech. Mostafaei will present “Recent Advancements from Powder Production to Additive Manufacturing of Non-Spherical Powder.” This seminar will take place on Friday, September 6, 2024, from 12:45–1:45 p.m. in room 104 of the Rettaliata Engineering Center.

Abstract

The limitations of current additive manufacturing (AM) practices are primarily associated with the use of expensive and energy-intensive spherical powdered materials. The cold mechanically driven method employs attrition milling with a reciprocating cutter, achieving precise powder size distribution, leading to the production of pore-free metal powders with reduced energy input. My team is exploring the use of non-spherical particles in powder bed AM. To this end, we aim to enhance powder-spreading dynamics through multimodal particles and a hybrid powder dispenser as well as improve laser-powder interaction and microstructure control. This effort will enhance material choices, making production more cost-effective and sustainable across various AM processes such as binder jetting and laser/electron beam powder bed fusion. Understanding relationships of powder-processes-structure-property in powder bed AM is the key to developing a new material system for AM. There remain scientific questions such as how non-spherical powder characteristics, such as morphology and size, impact powder-powder interactions, potentially leading to lower packing density and non-uniform powder beds? What will deviate in laser-powder interaction by new characteristics of non-spherical powder. How will the change in cooling rates during AM processing influence solidification, impacting microstructure and resultant mechanical properties. In this seminar, I will present case studies associated with advanced characterization of melt pool dynamics using synchrotron X-ray, microstructure analysis and mechanical testing.

Biography

Amir Mostafaei is currently an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech). Prior to this appointment, he completed his postdoctoral work at Carnegie Mellon University through a fellowship from the Manufacturing Future Initiatives (MFI). He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2018. His research interests include: Metal additive manufacturing; alloy design; process-structure-property relationships in AM; synchrotron X-ray characterization techniques; data analytics in AM; and numerical and analytical modeling of sintering. Mostafaei is the recipient of a 2024 National Science Foundation CAREER Award on “Advancing Laser Powder Bed Fusion with Non-Spherical Powder.” He is also the principal investigator of an REU Site at Illinois Tech to train undergraduate students in the field of “Characterization of Materials Using Synchrotron and X-ray Based Tools” which is supported by the National Science Foundation.