SAMPE 2025 Panels – Engaging with the SAMPE Community
Transforming Future Leaders: Cross-Disciplinary Sustainable Engineering for Challenges in the 21st Century
Thursday, May 22, 2025 | 9:30 am - 11:00 am
As the world faces complex challenges there is a need to engineer solutions for the 21st century. This panel will explore how an interdisciplinary approach empowers students to engineer innovative solutions for real world problems. By integrating all engineering disciplines and engaging in addressing real-time sustainability problem-solving alongside world-class experts in the field the comprehensive model is making a difference. The panel will discuss how partnering with industry to address complex, multidisciplinary challenges in sustainability is impacting future leaders across academia, corporations, and NGOs. Panelists for this event will include: •Industry leaders sharing experiential insights •Global experts offering state-of-the-art solutions •Current students, faculty, and external collaborators This panel is ideal for: •Industry representatives seeking innovative sustainability solutions and talent through Villanova’s RISE consortium and SEED executive programs •Students eager to gain the skills needed to tackle global sustainability challenges •Academics interested in collaborating on groundbreaking research and education Join us for an inspiring panel discussion on how Villanova University is shaping the next generation of leaders in sustainability.
Hydrogen for Advanced Mobility
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 | 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
The US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $9.5B for clean H2 initiatives. The Department of Energy announced the Hydrogen Earthshot Initiative in June 2021 which sets an ambitious goal for cost reduction of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade (""1 1 1""). This initiative can unlock a significant increase in markets for hydrogen, including steel manufacturing, clean ammonia, energy storage, and heavy-duty transportation. For hydrogen to achieve its potential as a transportation fuel, key challenges around affordability, durability, and reliability must still be addressed. Innovations to produce, store, transport, and utilize hydrogen across multiple sectors are key to enabling these cost reductions and performance improvements. Advanced composites play a critical role in lightweight hydrogen tanks in the transportation sector for both compressed gas at 700 bar pressure or liquid hydrogen at 7 bar. This panel will address the technical challenges and opportunities for hydrogen fuel in ground transportation, commercial aircraft, and eVTOL/air-taxis.
Characterization of Materials in Extreme High-Temperature Environments Panel
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 | 9:30 am – 11:00 am
The growing demand for materials that can withstand higher temperatures necessitates rigorous characterization under extreme conditions to ensure performance and reliability. This panel will explore the latest advancements in testing equipment, methodologies, challenges, and innovations in thermomechanical testing. Panelists will provide insights into current testing technologies and offer a future outlook on the emerging demands for extreme-temperature materials.
Developing Sustainable Pathways for Composite Manufacturing Factory Waste
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 | 9:30 am - 11:00 am
A great deal of time and discussion has focused on the recycling of end-of-life reinforced composite structures such as wind turbine blades and marine craft. Additionally, offal from carbon fiber prepreg operations have a clear pathway for economically sustainable material recovery and reuse. No less important, in terms of volume is the factory waste generated in the manufacturing operations that build large fiberglass and hybrid carbon-glass composite products. For example, the waste generated from fabrication of utility-scale wind blade manufacturing approaches 15 – 20% of the total mass of the finished product. Globally, this is amounts to something around 100,000 metric tons per year of factory waste in wind energy alone. The purpose of this panel discussion is to identify specific solutions and pathways for factory waste generated by composite manufacturing operations. This waste includes significant volumes of fiberglass offal (from ply pattern cutting), consumables including vacuum bagging, feedlines, separator films, feedlines and large quantities of cured thermosetting polymers (epoxy, polyester, phenolic among others). The panel will include experts from composite manufacturing operations, waste management and product manufacturers accepting factory waste as part of their feedstocks.
The Looming Specter of Obsolescence: New vs. Legacy Materials with a Focus on Regulatory Requirements, Digital Twins, and Certification
Wednesday, May 21, 2025 | 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
There are a number of materials that could be regulated out of existence, pose high risk for environmental health and safety (EHS), and/or will lead to gaps in performance for new and legacy programs when ultimately replaced. The materials and processing (M&P) community will not always have the luxury of time to conduct and complete full A- and B-basis allowables for replacement and certification of new materials using traditional methods. New and faster ways will be necessary to screen, evaluate, and transition these materials into production without sacrificing safety and performance. This panel will focus on fostering a conversation in the solution space for these challenges, rather than the challenges themselves. Please join us for what promises to be an engaging discussion that affects many in the M&P community.
Enabling High-Rate Manufacturing with Induction Welding Insight from Atoms to Aircraft
Thursday, May 22, 2025 | 9:30 AM - 10:45 PM
Thermoplastic composites offer significant opportunity across aerospace manufacturing, but require new understanding across the polymer chemistry, tape development, panel consolidation, and part fabrication processing stages. Consequently, progress in this area requires shared understanding and communication across these disparate length scales. In this session we bring together expertise in multiscale modeling, thermoplastic chemistry, tape development, induction welding, and composite characterization to share recent advances in thermoplastic science and to broaden community and understanding across disciplinary boundaries. We include key perspectives from academic research labs, federal agencies, and industry in this interactive conversation.