Rodney Trice
Professor Rodney Trice, whose home department is in the School of Materials Engineering at Purdue University, has focused on many fundamental and applied research topics over the last 25 years. Prof. Trice, his students, and his faculty collaborators have investigated structure-property relationships of thermal barrier coatings at high temperature, researched the effect of petroleum-based and biofuel impurities on degradation of thermal barrier coatings, and established the importance of the suspension plasma spray process for industrial purposes. Prof. Trice begin working in the hypersonics research area in 2010. He is currently investigating the following hypersonic related topics: high-temperature high-emissivity coatings, processing of ceramic IR and RF windows, additive manufacture of C/C composites, direct ink write of SiC short fiber/SiC composites, and powder-processing schemes to fabricate ceramics into complex shapes. His current research is supported by Lockheed Martin, ONR, ARPA-E, BETO, Draper Labs, and AFRL, and is the ceramics thrust leader for the Hypersonic Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center (HAMTC). He currently advises 9 Ph.D. students. He is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, and handles ceramic-related submissions for Additive Manufacturing (IF=11.3) and Materials Research Letters (IF=7.3).