Research Area
The main research topics:
-injection moulding of biodegradable and polymeric materials;
-additive manufacturing (AM) of biodegradable and polymeric materials.
Research in the field of injection moulding processing of parts made of plastic and biodegradable materials is a modern European research topic, as it has known a constant development from the point of view of technology, equipment (from hydraulic drive to fully electric drive) and range of materials used. In order to mitigate the negative effects of the use of plastics, major research institutes have developed, in recent decades, a number of biodegradable plastics with functional characteristics comparable to those of conventional plastics. The laboratory that I manage purchased a SZ800H injection machine with the corresponding cooling system and an Akira Seiki processing device. The following results were obtained using this high-performance piece of equipment:
-execution of molds with active plates for injection at 0o and 90o of specimens specific to tensile testing;
-execution of other parts, which were subsequently coated with metal powders and ceramic powders in order to increase their functional characteristics;
-execution of parts for coating with silver nanoparticles by the PVD (Physical vapor deposition) method of biodegradable plastic granules and injecting them into the mold in order to obtain specimens specific to tensile testing;
-execution of parts made of biodegradable materials in order to study their machinability by water jet cutting;
-execution of parts made of reinforced materials like: 6.6 polyamide with glass microspheres, LV3 Nature arboform with aramid fibers, Fichte arbofill with glass microspheres.
The results of the research work described above materialized in:
-1 completed doctoral thesis about plastic material injection moulding, 2 completed doctoral theses about biodegradable material injection moulding and 3 almost completed doctoral theses about biodegradable material injection mouding, respectively;
-13 papers published in WoS-ranked journals with impact factor about plastic and biodegradable materials using injection moulding;
-8 papers published in WoS Proceedings about plastic material injection, 3 papers published in databases journals and 8 papers published in WoS Proceedings about biodegradable materials and other publications;
-funding for FP6, PNIII, H2020, bilateral Romania-China cooperation research projects has been applied for;
-plenary lectures have been given at prestigious worldwide conferences: ICCCI Japan, ICMTE South Korea, MMT Israel, AMPT Spain, MSE Romania, SATEE Romania, ACA Serbia, PCM China.
Research in the field of 3D printing (additive manufacturing-AM) of parts made of plastic and biodegradable materials has also been a modern European research approach. The laboratory that I manage has three 3D printers, one of which is a Raise Pro2 Plus printer based on the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) process, the most common 3D printing procedure.
Here are the results that I have achieved:
– printing of parts from 10 biodegradable materials and studying their properties in order to make some recommendations for the replacement of some plastic materials;
-1 completed doctoral thesis;
-4 papers published in WoS journals with impact factor;
-2 papers accepted by WoS Proceedings;
-2 papers accepted as book chapters of Advances in Manufacturing Processes, Springer Nature Singapore and Fused Deposition Modeling based 3D printing, Springer Nature Switzerland;
-H2020, PED, PNIII project applications;
-8 plenary lectures at prestigious international conferences: RAM2020 India, NewTech2020 Galaţi-Romania, ICMTE2020 South Korea, ICAME2E Langkawi-Malaysia, ICCCI2018 Kurashiki-Japan.
