Sustainable Engineering

Dr. David Jack

Fiber Reinforced Composite Structural Members Made from Recycled Polymers

This research seeks to better understand the use of recycled post-consumer/post-industrial waste composed of HDPE and GFPP in the formation of structural members for use in the rail and boating industries and the mechanisms contributing to the spatially varying material properties. Baylor researchers have modeled shell and foamed core regions using constitutive modeling for recycled composite structures and validated the four-point bend test using Finite Element Analysis. Researchers are investigating the correlation between the underlying viscoelastic/viscoplastic behavior of the constitutive materials and linking that with the microstructure variations to predict the final part performance.

Dr. Byron Newberry

Dr. Abhendra Singh

Dr. Douglas Smith

Mechanical Evaluation of Carbon Fiber Filled FDM Components

Adding carbon fiber to ABS or PLA for use in desktop fused deposition modeling is expected to increase the stiffness and strength of the additive manufacture part. This project quantifies the benefit of adding fibers by characterizing the fiber content and measuring material properties for fiber filled FDM parts produced with various deposition path orientations.