University of Delaware Center for Composite Materials

08/31/2026

🚀 Save the Date: CCM CONNECTS is Back!

Join us for an exciting double-header seminar exploring the cutting edge of natural fiber research and advanced composite manufacturing.

📅 Date: September 9, 2026
🕚 Time: 11:00 AM
📍 Location: 101 Academy Street, Room 106

Featured Talks:

🔬 Seeing and Testing Flax Fibers Across Length Scales: Linking Morphology to Mechanical Behavior

Discover how multi-scale characterization of flax fibers unveils the direct relationship between intrinsic fiber morphology and overall mechanical performance.

🧵 TuFF Alignment of Natural Fibers: How Fiber Morphology Dictates Deposition Mechanics, Fiber Volume Fraction, and Resulting Mechanical Properties

Learn how Tailored Universal Feedstock Form (TuFF) technology aligns natural fibers, and why understanding morphology is critical for optimizing fiber volume fraction and structural behavior.

Whether you are working in sustainable materials, bio-composites, or advanced manufacturing, this session offers valuable insights into bridging the gap between natural fiber structures and high-performance applications.

Bring your questions and join the discussion! 💡



University of Delaware College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
University of Delaware Department of Mechanical Engineering

08/28/2026

As National Composites Week comes to a close, we’re celebrating the collaborations and industry partnerships that help move composite innovation from discovery to deployment.

Great discussions, shared expertise, and a focus on future possibilities!

We were excited to host the Trinseo team at our center and engage in meaningful technical discussions around innovation, challenges, and opportunities within our industry. Visits like these reinforce the value of collaboration and the impact that strong partnerships can have on driving progress.

Thank you to the Trinseo team for the opportunity to connect and collaborate. We look forward to continuing the conversation and exploring new ways to work together in the future.

08/27/2026

In celebration of National Composites Week, we’re highlighting more than five decades of composite innovation.

From discovery to deployment: advancing composite innovation since 1974.

We are proud to be featured in CompositesWorld highlighting how the UD Center For Composite Materials (UD-CCM) bridges fundamental research, manufacturing innovation, and workforce development.

Since 1974, CCM has brought together faculty, students, industry partners, and government organizations to advance composite materials from early-stage discovery toward real-world applications.

Through interdisciplinary research, industry collaboration, and initiatives such as SPARC (Strategic Partnerships for Applied Research in Composites), CCM continues to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced composite technologies across aerospace, defense, energy, transportation, infrastructure, and beyond.

Our mission remains focused on connecting materials discovery, manufacturing readiness, and education to create the next generation of composite solutions.

Thank you to CompositesWorld for highlighting CCM’s role in advancing the future of composites.

Read the article: https://brnw.ch/21x5fRv

Learn more about UD-CCM: https://brnw.ch/21x5fRw

The University of Delaware's Center for Composite Materials connects materials research, industry partnerships and workforce development in one program.

08/26/2026

During National Composites Week, we’re celebrating not only today’s composite innovators, but also the future engineers who will carry the field forward.

🚀 Destination Moon at CCM

One of our favorite summer traditions, Destination Moon continues a 34+ year partnership between UD Center For Composite Materials and the DELAWARE AEROSPACE EDUCATION FOUNDATION (DASEF), inspiring middle school students through hands-on engineering and composites activities.

Students tour CCM labs, learn about real-world applications of composites, and then step into the role of engineers by designing and fabricating their own space beams. With guidance from the CCM team and testing by the University of Delaware SAMPE student chapter, students experience the engineering process from design to testing.

For us, it's an opportunity to open our doors, share our knowledge, and inspire the next generation of leaders. If even one student leaves believing they could become an engineer someday, we've made a lasting impact.

A sincere thank you to everyone from the SAMPE team Jonathan Wilson, Michael Vo, Lukas Fuessel, Rahul Kovuru, Srikar Varanasi who made this year’s camp a success, and helped create an engaging, hands-on learning experience for the students.

Maybe you know someone who would like to join us next July!

08/25/2026

Celebrating National Composites Week by highlighting the innovative research advancing the future of composite manufacturing.

Excited to share the latest research from UD Center For Composite Materials, now published in the Journal of Composite Materials!

Aligned discontinuous fiber composites offer a promising route for rapid manufacturing of composite structures using forming processes. However, reliable forming simulation requires a material model that can capture how the uncured prepreg actually behaves during deformation.

In this work, we show that uncured aligned discontinuous fiber (ADF) prepregs exhibit a strongly nonlinear and strain-rate dependent tensile response when loaded along the fiber-alignment direction, including rate-dependent peak stress, post-yield softening, and stress relaxation.

Key contributions:
🔬 Characterized tensile and stress relaxation behavior over three orders of magnitude in strain rate.
📈 Developed a two-regime constitutive model capturing nonlinear hardening, post-yield softening, and time dependent relaxation.
✅ Validated the model against constant strain-rate tensile tests, stress relaxation experiments, and variable strain-rate loading histories.
🛠️ Implemented the formulation in Abaqus/Explicit to support finite element forming simulations.

This work provides a practical path for converting mechanical characterization data into predictive forming simulations for aligned discontinuous fiber composites.

Congratulations to Navid Niknafs, Nithin Kaliyath Parambil
and John Gillespie for this impactful publication.

This work was supported by NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration University Leadership Initiative (ULI) program.

08/24/2026

The best time of the year is officially back. Welcoming our back to campus!

08/24/2026

🔬 Innovation Starts with Curious Minds

Every advancement in composite materials begins with a question: What if?

At the University of Delaware Center for Composite Materials our students, researchers, faculty, and industry partners are driven by curiosity. From exploring new manufacturing processes to developing next-generation materials for aerospace, energy, transportation, and beyond, innovation starts with a willingness to challenge assumptions and discover new possibilities.

As we celebrate National Composites Week, we're recognizing the talented minds working every day to push the boundaries of composite materials, manufacturing, and technology. Their curiosity fuels the research, collaboration, and innovation that help shape the future.

Thank you to our students, alumni, faculty, staff, and industry partners who continue to inspire, question, create, and innovate.

08/21/2026

Lucas Castle, an intern with University of Delaware Center for Composite Materials and recent master's degree graduate with University of Delaware Department of Mechanical Engineering shares his experience.

"CCM has had an impact on my career through teaching me a great deal of skills in data analysis, technical writing, composite manufacturing, and presentation creation. These are all valuable skills that will aid me in the industry and in my career as a whole. "

08/18/2026

🔍 CCM Research Spotlight: Infrastructure & Energy

As part of our CCM Research Highlights series, today we're featuring our work in infrastructure and energy, advancing composite technologies that improve the resilience, durability, and sustainability of the nation's critical infrastructure.

Research Highlights:

• Composite rebar, bridge decks, and structural components deliver exceptional durability, extending service life while reducing maintenance and lifecycle costs
• Advanced composite solutions reinforce critical infrastructure and support next-generation energy technologies, strengthening U.S. infrastructure resilience and manufacturing leadership

Why it matters:
From extending the lifespan of bridges and other civil infrastructure to enabling more resilient energy systems, CCM is redefining what advanced composites can achieve. Each innovation helps build infrastructure that is stronger, more durable, and designed to meet the demands of the future.

🌐 Learn more about our research and explore collaboration opportunities at https://brnw.ch/21x51si.

08/14/2026

📢 New Publication Highlight

Congratulations to Shih Wen Chen, Navid Niknafs, Pavel Simacek, and Suresh Advani on their recent publication in Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow.

Voids caused by trapped bubbles remain a major challenge in liquid composite molding, affecting the quality and performance of composite parts. In our recent paper published in Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow, we experimentally characterized bubble mobility through different fabric architectures and developed physics-based models to predict bubble transport behavior.

The study demonstrates that bubble mobility is strongly influenced by the ratio of the initial bubble diameter to the fabric tow-gap width. Larger diameter-to-gap ratios resulted in higher mobility, while resin viscosity had a comparatively limited effect within the investigated range.

This work provides a predictive framework for understanding bubble transport and can help guide processing strategies to minimize void formation and improve composite manufacturing reliability.

Read the paper:

👉 https://brnw.ch/21x4VZP