IACMI Members Meeting reconnects members, discusses road ahead

The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI, Knoxville, Tenn., U.S.) held its Fall 2021 Members Meeting in Dearborn, Mich., U.S. on Oct. 5-7. According to Dale Brosius, chief commercialization officer at IACMI, it’d been 622 days since the last in-person IACMI Members Meeting in January 2020.

A few themes running throughout speaker presentations were the role of composites in the U.S. automotive industry, workforce development and the next generation of composites professionals, and a focus on sustainability throughout every market the composites industry serves.

 

Event speakers: Automotive innovation, workforce development

These themes were amplified by the four featured speakers. Sandy Munro, CEO of Munro & Associates (Auburn Hills, Mich., U.S.), discussed paradigm shifts within automotive manufacturing, and how U.S. automakers should

shift design thinking toward composites-intensive electric vehicles (EV) and even electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to compete in the global transportation market. “Past success means nothing when the paradigm changes,” he said.

U.S. Representative Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) applauded the way Michigan manufacturers have stepped up since the beginning of the pandemic, and noted her and Congress’ ongoing efforts to solve supply chain issues. “What’s the moonshot of the next 50 years? It’s vehicular technology. It’s what you’re all working on,” she said. “Part of what we’re all doing is propelling innovation forward — we can’t rest a beat!”

Satish Udpa, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan State University (MSU, East Lansing), introduced various mobility-related R&D projects that MSU is working on, including composites projects related to vehicle lightweighting, recyclability, rapid joining technologies and vehicle structural health monitoring.

Brent Strong, chief technology officer of the Utah Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Initiative (UAMMI), spoke about the ways UAMMI is connecting companies along the supply chain within Utah, developing the next-generation workforce through high school and college programs, and enabling research efforts into various sectors of the industry.

Additional speakers during the conference included John Hopkins, CEO of IACMI; Josh Hundt, executive VP and chief business development officer at the Michigan Economic Development Corp.; Joe Fox, consultant at FX Consulting; Scott Blake, president of Aligned Vision; Matthew Pais, modeling and simulation director at Dassault Systèmes; Andrew Maxey, CEO of Vartega; Joannie Harmon, workforce director at IACMI; Hicham Ghossein, CEO, president and founder of Endeavor Composites; Christopher Oberste, founder and CEO of WEAV3D Inc. and more.

A panel including Scott Stephenson, director of strategic events and initiatives at CompositesWorld; Raj Manchanda, CTO at SAMPE; Dan Coughlin, VP of composites market development at ACMA; and Uday Vaidya, CTO at IACMI discussed ways these organizations can unite efforts to develop the composites workforce and solve industry challenges.

Working Groups and IACMI projects

IACMI’s Working Groups, begun in 2020 and including industry representatives spanning the supply chain for various topics and markets, also met during the week and group leaders presented summaries of each group’s activities. All six Working Groups — Infrastructure/Construction, Recycling/Circular Economy, High-Rate Aerostructures Fabrication, Simulation/Digital Twin, Future Mobility/Vehicles Technology, and Wind Energy — aim to connect industry leaders and move innovation forward. Those interested in participating in future Working Group meetings, either in-person or virtually, can find more information at iacmi.org/working-groups/.

Three IACMI-funded projects were also showcased. Indraneel Page, innovations supervisor – structures and exteriors at Dura Automotive Systems (Auburn Hills, Mich., U.S.), presented an ongoing project to develop a layup and preforming process using continuous fiber tapes at high speeds suitable for the automotive industry. Using a first-row seat design and parameters from partner Ford, Dura Automotive designed a composite seat back structure and cushion pan said to reduce weight by 29% and number of parts by 28% compared to the original Ford design. Dura Automotive built 2D preforms using BASF Ultratape on a FILL tape-laying machine at IACMI’s Scale-Up Research Facility (SURF), and additional features were added via injection overmolding. Page said additional trials and testing were ongoing.

Vartega’s (Golden, Colo., U.S.) Maxey introduced a project using the same Ford seatback design and tooling from Dura Automotive, built via recycled carbon fiber (rCF) and thermoplastic injection molded pellets. The current design uses rCF and PA6, Maxey said, and initial results are expected to be published soon.

MSU’s Mahmood Haq and Oleksii Karpenko presented work they and their research teams are doing to develop high-speed nondestructive testing (NDI) for composite parts. The work involves both hardware development such as robotic platform and a gantry system, and scanning software. The teams are also working to develop capacitative and hybrid inductive/capacitive electromagnetic sensors, and hope to translate the technology into use by the automotive industry for part inspection.

Finally, the meeting capped with a tour of IACMI’s Scale-Up Research Facility (SURF) in the Corktown neighborhood of Detroit. Visitors had an opportunity to see the facility’s capabilities, including a hot-melt prepreg line, BASF 3D printing labs and equipment, FILL multi-layer tape laying machine, Milacron injection molding machine and Schuler compression press with high-pressure resin transfer molding (HP-RTM) capabilities.

For information on future IACMI Members Meetings, visit iacmi.org/membersmeetings/.