Daniel Oropeza

Daniel Oropeza is an Assistant Professor in the Materials Department at UCSB. He received his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2012, completing research on materials characterization for electromagnetic railguns. He earned his M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 2014, conducting research on structural health monitoring of laminate composites. Daniel spent two years at Lockheed Martin, where he assisted the Chief Scientist’s Office with multi-national research projects in thermal management, propulsion, and energy generation for hypersonic platforms. Daniel completed his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Mechanical Engineering in 2021. His doctoral research explored the fundamentals of binder jet additive manufacturing for ceramic materials, with published work on custom testbed fabrication, powder spreading and ceramic additive manufacturing (AM). He was a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the Materials and Manufacturing Technology Group, implementing AM processes to control the interfacial microstructure and thermomechanical properties of metallic materials. At UCSB, Daniel’s group couples the study of material synthesis and characterization, machine and equipment design, and manufacturing process fundamentals, to develop next-generation alloys and ceramic materials. Group expertise includes testbed fabrication, powder rheology and characterization, and sinter-based ceramics processing. Additionally, Daniel is leading an effort to develop a regional California consortium in the area of materials and manufacturing, the University Consortium for Materials and Manufacturing for Aerospace, Defense, and Energy (UC M2ADE).

ABSTRACT

Spatial tailoring of ceramics via additive manufacturing for material-efficient processing

Over the past 30 years we have seen significant growth, evolution, and implementation of additive manufacturing processes from the laboratory to the factory floor, with demonstrated capability to attain highly complex parts at low production volumes and have demonstrated reduction in component lead times. For ceramics, the formation of high-density, geometrically complex features via additive manufacturing is still a challenge and the fabrication of multi-material spatially-tailored components is of great interest. This talk will discuss ongoing projects at the Materials and Manufacturing for Aerospace and Extremes Laboratory (MMAX Lab) at UCSB related to the use of additive manufacturing for efficient deposition of ceramic materials for spatially-tailored functionality. I will highlight two projects, demonstrating methods for generating spatially-tailored microstructure and composition. First, I’ll present work on the control of microstructure and deformation of ceramics via reactive binder jet additive manufacturing. Second, I’ll showcase work on the exploration of nanoparticle material jetting fundamentals for multi-material ceramic components. This presentation aims to provide a perspective on the possibilities for spatial tailoring of ceramics and the current state-of-the-art in processing science for compositional control.