UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 23, Page 3
March 9, 1995
Composites research; Army lab relocation opens up opportunities

     Early this year, the DuPont Co. announced plans to lease its
Chestnut Run Laboratory site to the U.S. Army Reseay quarters for
materials research and testing. Since work at the site will focus on
the development of advanced materials, including composites, an
ongoing relationship between the University and the ARL will be
enhanced and expanded.
     Almost 150 Army employees from ARL's Materials Directorate
(ARL-MD) will be relocated to the Delaware site until a new facility
is completed at Aberdeen, Md., in late 1997 or early 1998.
     Previously headquartered in Watertown, Mass., ARL-MD had strong
links with academic institutions in New England, including MIT,
Worcester Polytech, Brown, Tufts and Northeastern universities. The
move will require establishing such relationships with universities in
the Maryland- Delaware area, including the UD.
     Collaboration with the Army is hardly new to the University.
Since 1986, the Center for Composite Materials has been a Center of
Excellence for Composites Manufacturing Science under the Army
Research Office/University Research Initiative program. Roy L.
McCullough, professor of chemical engineering, and Tsu-Wei Chou, Jerzy
L. Nowinski Professor of Mechanical Engineering, are co-principal
investigators on this major interdisciplinary program, which involves
eight additional faculty and 13 graduate students.
     In 1992, a cooperative research and development agreement was
executed between the University and the ARL, enabling a broad variety
of collaborative mechanisms, including personnel exchanges, sharing of
equipment and co-advisement of students. The center also has links to
some dozen Army labs in a diverse range of areas with both civilian
and military applications-from lightweight bridging and composites
packaging to welding, nondestructive evaluation, blast resistance, and
the use of composites in the Arctic.
     Other current Army-funded projects at UD include:
        * The center is part of a team selected by United Defense
          Limited Partnership (UDLP) under a U.S. Army TARDEC
          initiative to develop the Composite Armored Vehicle-Advanced
          Technology Demonstrator (CAV-ATD). John W. Gillespie Jr.,
          associate professor of materials science, is principal
          investigator and a member of the UDLP CAV-ATD technical
          advisory committee.
        * Under a grant from the Army Research Office's Computational
          Division, Suresh Advani, associate professor of mechanical
          engineering, is developing a computer-based simulation tool
          for flow in the resin transfer molding process. This work is
          being carried out in collaboration with ARL's Advanced
          Computational and Information Sciences Directorate.
        * With Army Research Office funding, center researchers, led
          by Gillespie and Karl V. Steiner, associate scientist, have
          teamed with industry to develop the automated tow-placement
          process for thermoplastic polymer-based composites.
     Despite this strong history of interaction, initiation of ARL's
"Federated Laboratory" concept in 1996 will give new meaning to
university-government collaboration. Gary Hagnauer, ARL-MD senior
research scientist, explained: "We are beginning to do business very
differently from traditional defense labs by adopting this system,
which grew out of the Army's desire to leverage basic university
research and bring university researchers together with industry to
collaborate with Army researchers in a way that allows the research to
be published and raises no barriers to creative work."
     The mechanism for the interaction-also referred to as the
University Research Partnership-is the Cooperative Research Agreement.
     "This new paradigm for government-university cooperation is
similar to a grant arrangement with one major difference-substantial
involvement is now expected between the funding agency and the grant
recipient," Hagnauer said. "This will include two-way access to
facilities, exchange of personnel and so on. What we're trying to
achieve is a very different way of interacting without compromising
academic integrity."
     Composites remain high on the federal government's list of
"critical technologies"-that is, those deemed essential to both
national security and U.S. economic competitiveness. ARL's programs
exemplify this interest.
     Under the University Research Program, ARL-MD is currently
funding three projects at Delaware, one in polymer-matrix composites,
the other two addressing ceramic- and metal-matrix materials.
     The program, which is coordinated through the Center for
Composite Materials, involves several faculty members from the
Department of Chemical Engineering (McCullough), the Materials Science
Program (Gillespie) and the Department of Mechanical Engineering
(Chou, Ian Hall, Jack Vinson and Azar Parvizi-Majidi). The researchers
are currently working on a proposal to extend the efforts of the 1994
program.
     "The center already has a very strong relationship with ARL,"
said Richard Wool, director, "and we welcome the opportunity to work
even more closely with ARL during this time. Our overlapping research
interests in composites and advanced materials should result in many
new collaborative efforts that will beneficially impact on all our
horizons."
                                                         -Diane Kukich