This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant focuses on developing a science-based manufacturing strategy that combines experiment, modeling, and process development to create novel multifunctional yarns and textiles made from shape memory alloy microfibers. Multifunctional yarns and textiles incorporate active material microfibers in their structure to provide actuation, sensing, energy harvesting, or communication, potentially revolutionizing medical devices, rehabilitation equipment, and wearable technologies to deliver life-saving and life-enhancing interventions. Shape memory alloys are a particularly promising material system for multifunctional yarns and textiles because they directly afford actuation through the shape memory effect and energy absorption through the superelastic effect. It is hypothesized that the performance of the yarns and textiles are a function of the material composition, heat treatment, and processing parameters. This research seeks to understand the interrelationships between processing, structure and properties, predict the performance of the yarns and textiles through the creation of modeling capabilities, and develop a manufacturing strategy to produce and implement multifunctional textiles with tailorable mechanical performance. The research advances are integrated into outreach, mentoring, artistic and coursework activities to increase the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority and female students, grow the community of STEM literate citizens, and develop the next generation of researchers and educators.
The specific goal of the research is to understand the effects of material, yarn, and textile processing on the properties and performance of shape memory alloy (SMA) yarns and textiles. SMAs are temperature, path, and history-dependent materials. The manufacture of new SMA architectures, such as microfiber yarns and textiles, must account for each of these histories to achieve consistent mechanical performance. The research objectives of this project are: 1) Experimentally demonstrate the interrelationship between material, yarn, and textile processing and performance of NiTi SMA yarns and textiles, 2) Derive a predictive model for NiTi yarns by incorporating stresses in microfibers, a non-linear NiTi material model and manufacturing boundary conditions, and 3) Establish a qualitative and quantitative hierarchical manufacturing strategy for NiTi integrated textiles. This project seeks to address the following fundamental questions at each length scale: i) What processing parameters are required to achieve a desired mechanical performance in fibers at the microscale? ii) What manufacturing changes are necessary to create multifunctional fibers on a scale appropriate for yarn spinning? and iii) How can existing textile manufacturing processes be modified to create textiles with tunable kinematic and kinetic properties? This project allows the PI to combine innovative design processes and advanced manufacturing techniques with material and structural modeling to lay the scientific foundation necessary for the rigorous design and manufacture of multifunctional yarns and textiles.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
