This award will partially support a symposium jointly organized by Prof. John Kardos of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and Prof. L. Nicolais of the University of Naples, Italy on the topic of processing of polymeric matrix composite materials. In recent years, the use of composite materials has expanded from aerospace applications to consumer product industries. Many consumer products must be produced in large volume and at relatively low unit cost, not to mention the fact that aerospace manufacturers are also sensitive to the leverage that low unit cost has on expanded applications. Low unit costs in turn are associated with short production cycle times and high production yields. In this context, management of the curing, forming, and shaping processes for composite materials represents as significant a change to the materials and manufacturing organizations as the impact the technology has had on the design development functions. This symposium, jointly supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Italian National Research Council (CNR), will bring together leading researchers from both industry and academia to discuss advances and current problems in the processing of these materials, thus helping to address manufacturing process operations in both the consumer product industries and in those industries in which composite materials are utilized in high performance primary structural applications. Because of current worldwide interest in composite materials, this symposium is both timely and of potential benefit to the U.S. and Italy and, furthermore, should increase collaborative interactions between U.S. and Italian researchers.
