Focus Areas

Materials Weldability: Successful adoption of conventional and advanced materials requires the ability to successfully fabricate and join them.  A range of cracking and failure modes can occur when joining materials due to fundamental knowledge gaps on its weldability.  Ma²JIC research teams examine the material weldability to determine effective methods and approaches to successfully join these materials and quantitatively asses its weldability.

Manufacturing and Joining Processes Development: Continuous process innovation is vital to achieving high productivity, quality, and improved performance, while supporting our advanced manufacturing and global competitiveness.  As industry needs, materials and applications evolve; new and improved manufacturing and joining technologies are required to meet new challenges.  Ma²JIC considers a full-lifecycle approach when developing and implementing process innovations.

Materials Performance: A clear understanding of material processing - microstructure - properties - performance relationship is essential for the development and use of advanced materials.  Expertise and experience within Ma²JIC is applied to clearly understand the relationships above and successfully implement solutions so that increasingly demanding design requirements can consistently be met.

Modeling Innovation: Process, microstructural, and structural modeling specific to joining and additive manufacturing is evolving and models can now be applied to a broad range of industrial applications. The use of modeling and/or simulation is emphasized in the majority of Ma²JIC projects.  Members have experienced the benefits of modeling and simulation as they increase process and materials understanding, expedite development, improve performance, and extend the lifetime of products.

Additive Manufacturing: Additive manufacturing (AM) is now being used to address unique challenges, reduce costs, and manufacture parts for critical service.  Laser, electron beam, or arc welding processes (and others) are integral to many AM processes.  Based on the fundamental understanding of advanced materials, welding processes, process modeling, and industrial applications, the researchers within Ma²JIC are ideally positioned to address the challenges associated with the use of AM technology for product development.