The Advanced Composites Center (ACC) vision is to build a robust innovation ecosystem for industry and academia to advance the field of data-driven methods for composites manufacturing. Our mission is to unleash the power of Digital Engineering and AI to discover solutions for high-rate, cost-effective, and sustainable composites manufacturing and educate the workforce of the future.
ACC will be the leader in using advances in data-based methods and machine learning for developing high-rate, cost-efficient composite manufacturing methods, reducing the environmental footprint of the aerospace industry and training the work-force of the future. Leveraging industrial partnerships (see typical IP terms), the ACC will transform fundamental research into practice, and feedback successful technologies into workforce education and training.
The center will lead and act as a national magnet for design, manufacturing, evaluation and certification of novel energy-efficient lightweight composite systems. The outcomes of the ACC include:
- Research
- Workforce education
- Educational outreach
- Professional technical training
- Commercialization
The ACC will have demonstrator- capable manufacturing floor, classroom and presentation space, graduate student suite, fully-equipped conference room, technical office, BARC engineering office, and (shared) industry-user office. The ACC facility equipment will be available as a cost center for other UW and external users. Additionally, the center will be available for composites educational and outreach efforts.
Recent News
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How Washington became a global epicenter for advanced carbon fiber
Thursday, April 1, 2021 UW ME News Stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum, carbon fiber materials are one of the key enabling technologies of the 21st century. They play an especially important role in Washington, the world leader in carbon fiber composite manufacturing. Just as silicon is the material that underlies the innovation ecosystem…
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ACC researchers wins Best of BTEC Awards
Advanced Composites Center (ACC) researchers have won the Best of BTEC award for two consecutive years at the Boeing Technical Excellence Conference where hundreds of the Boeing company’s engineers gather each year to discuss innovations. The 2019 Best of BTEC award went to the work on “Improved Tow-End Recognition for Fiber Placement Inspection using Machine Learning ” by…
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A Factory-Centric Workforce Development Approach for Aerospace Industry
Navid Zobeiry presented A Factory-Centric Workforce Development Approach for Aerospace Industry through the SAMPE Virtual Series. Given the rapid transformation of the aerospace sector in the last decade, teaching practices should prepare engineers to face fast-paced industries that are dealing with exceedingly complex problems. Now more than ever we need engineers who are capable of…