Ahmad Najafi
Drexel University, PA·Engineering·Early-career
Many advanced products need materials that do several jobs at once. A car panel might also store electricity; an aircraft part might also cool itself.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
Computer Science
- Topics
topology optimization
multifunctional materials
multiphysics optimization
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Create a 3-M (multiphysics, multiscale, multifunctional) optimization framework that designs a material's constituents and internal architecture at the same time while balancing conflicting functions.
- Build reduced-order models, fast simplified stand-ins for full simulations, and machine-learning surrogate models, then integrate them into multiphysics optimization to make multifunctional design computationally affordable.
- Use the framework to design structural battery composites, load-bearing materials that also store energy, with improved combined mechanical and electrochemical properties.
- Use the framework to design actively cooled microvascular composites, fiber-reinforced polymers with internal coolant channels, for high-temperature aerospace, automotive and microelectronic applications.
More about the research
Designing such materials is hard because the jobs often pull in opposite directions: what makes a part stiff may make it a poor battery or a poor heat conductor. The computer models that predict how these materials behave are complex and slow to run, and designers must tune the material at several size scales at once.
Why it matters
The framework could help engineers design lighter, more efficient parts for cars, aircraft, robots and portable electronics. Structural battery composites could act as "mass-less" batteries, where a vehicle's frame itself stores energy. Actively cooled microvascular composites could let lightweight fiber-reinforced polymers be used in hot automotive, aerospace and microelectronic settings where they currently cannot survive.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jun Li
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach, FL·Engineering
Develop direct mesoscale simulations of 3D printing that couple heat, mechanical forces, chemistry and fluid-structure interactions, to show how temperature gradients and melting between filaments and reinforcing fibers lead to micro-cracks.
Xiangyang Dong
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Engineering·Early-career
Determine how pressure and viscosity control how liquid soaks into carbon fiber networks during coextrusion 3D printing of structural battery composites, using multi-scale computational fluid dynamics of capillary permeation.
Gregory Odegard
Michigan Technological University, MI·Materials Science
Use molecular dynamics simulations to measure how polymer chains mix, crystallize and build up stress at interfaces between carbon fiber layers. Simulate conditions from automated fiber placement, induction welding and stamp forming.
The school
Drexel University: 11 labs on PI Pages, $170M a year on research, 282 research doctorates a year.
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