Sougata Roy receives NSF CAREER award to advance printability of aluminum alloys
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Sougata Roy, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, received a National Science Foundation CAREER award to expand the use of aluminum alloys in an advanced manufacturing process known as laser powder-blown Directed Energy Deposition (L-DED).
About the project
L-DED uses a focused laser to melt metal powders and build thin layers of metal, similar to 3D printing. Because the process is fast, it is well suited for repairing or manufacturing large components.
Using aluminum instead of steel for naval and aerospace parts would make them lighter and stronger. Hence, this alloy is often used for structural applications in the defense sector, increasing fuel efficiency through lighter, faster products and reducing stress-corrosion cracking. However, aluminum alloys tend to crack during L-DED processing, limiting broader industrial use.
Roy’s NSF CAREER project aims to address that challenge. He and his research team will study how and why cracks form during L-DED processing of aluminum and develop new approaches to improve the performance of printed parts.
“There is an urgent need to develop science-driven strategies that can significantly eliminate defects such as cracks and porosities in L-DED-processed aluminum to create additively fabricated parts with enhanced mechanical properties. I believe this project can play a crucial role in advancing such fundamental understanding on the key factors driving solidification cracking and approaches to mitigate them reasonably,” said Roy, who is also an Iowa State University College of Engineering Building a World of Difference Faculty Fellow.
About Sougata Roy
Roy’s research interests include advanced manufacturing, materials science, surface engineering and tribology. He leads the Convergent Manufacturing, Processing and Advanced Surface Science Laboratory at Iowa State, where the group takes on multidisciplinary engineering problems supported by various federal agencies, including NSF, ONR, DOE, NEUP, NASA and USDA.
Roy previously received a TMS Young Leaders Professional Development Award, TMS Frontiers Materials Award, a Distinguished Early Career Program faculty award from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy and was named an NSF EPSCoR Research Fellow.
Before joining Iowa State University, he was an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota for three years and a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He also worked in industry at Cummins Inc. before beginning his doctoral studies at Iowa State University.
Roy earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Iowa State University, and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.