The Manufacturing and Materials Joining Innovation Center (Ma2JIC) at The Ohio State University, in conjunction with its partner universities, has successfully established a platform to promote the synergistic collaboration between world leading industrial and academic organizations to develop and apply fundamental knowledge in the areas of materials joining and additive manufacturing, as well as educating the next generation of leading and diverse scientists and engineers in the area of advanced manufacturing. Materials joining and additive manufacturing are critical enabling technologies essential to maintaining US leadership in manufacturing and to expand its workforce. When combined, these intrinsically related technologies impact virtually every segment of the US industry. Ma2JIC develops R&D projects that are critical to its industry and government partners and provide students with scientific, engineering and leadership skills that allow them to contribute to society. The center scientific activities include conventional and advanced materials welding and joining, metallic additive manufacturing, fundamental materials science, integrated computational materials engineering, and fitness-for-service.
Ma2JIC's large, diverse and synergistic industrial membership supports an interesting portfolio of research projects in four thrust areas, namely 1) Material Performance, 2) Weldability/Manufacturability Testing and Evaluation, 3) Modeling, 4) Additive Manufacturing and Processes Innovation. The Materials Performance thrust area involves structural materials and manufacturing processes related projects that have an important effect on the mechanical, functional and environmental performance of the products, along with focuses on extending the lifetime of critical components, cost reduction and reliability. The Weldability/Manufactutability Testing and Evaluation thrust area seeks to develop testing methods for validating new materials and processes and support the agile development of new manufacturing-amenable materials. The Modeling thrust area concentrates on the development and use of integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) tools that expedite and reduce the cost of joining and additive manufacturing technologies deployment to industry, and rigorously consider the complex interactions between materials and processes. The Additive Manufacturing (AM) and Process Innovation thrust area addresses fundamental aspects of metal deposition processes and the development of new joining/manufacturing processes that address the challenges of current and future manufacturing demands involving advanced materials. The results of the center R&D projects significantly enhance applications of existing materials as well as enables the use of advanced materials in a wide range of demanding industrial applications, substantially benefiting the U.S. economy and defense.
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.
