Tutorials
Expand your expertise with SAMPE 2026 Tutorials. These immersive, three-hour courses give attendees a focused, hands-on experience in a single area of advanced materials or processes. Designed to establish a strong foundation, tutorials enhance understanding and prepare participants to fully engage with the conference’s technical sessions, panels, and exhibits.
Offered on Monday only, they give you a head start on all the knowledge and practical skills you will learn throughout the conference.
How to Attend
Tutorials are included with Premium Conference Badges or are available a la carte.
Artificial Intelligence and the Composites Product Lifecycle
Instructors: Dr. Navid Zobeiry & Dr. Anoush Poursartip
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming every stage of composites engineering, from materials development to manufacturing optimization and lifecycle performance. In this tutorial, attendees will gain a clear, practical understanding of today’s most relevant AI methods, including machine learning models, physics-informed techniques, surrogate modeling, optimization methods, and uncertainty quantification. Through accessible explanations and real-world case studies, this session demonstrates how AI can shorten development cycles, reduce testing costs, enhance quality assurance, and enable predictive maintenance and digital twins.
Participants will also explore the challenges that come with responsible AI integration, including data scarcity, noise and bias, scaling from laboratory to production, and validation frameworks necessary for certification. The tutorial concludes with a balanced look at regulatory, safety, cybersecurity, and ethical considerations. Attendees will leave with a grounded, actionable view of where AI truly adds value, and how to implement it effectively across the composites product lifecycle.
Dr. Anoush Poursartip
Dr. Anoush Poursartip is a Professor of Materials Engineering at the University of British Columbia and leads the Boeing- and Toray-supported Composites Research Network. His work focuses on the digitalization of composites manufacturing through the coordinated use of physics-based simulation, machine learning/AI, statistics, sensing, and automation. He also serves as Director of Research at Convergent Manufacturing Technologies, developing digital simulation and instrumentation tools, now increasingly AI-enhanced, to support better decision-making in process design and production. In addition, Poursartip is Co-Director of the Composites Knowledge Network, which delivers digitally enabled composite-practice resources and training. He is a Fellow of SAMPE, ICCM, CACSMA, and the Canadian Academy of Engineering.
Dr. Navid Zobeiry
Dr. Navid Zobeiry is an Associate Professor of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, with an adjunct appointment in Aeronautics & Astronautics. His research integrates materials science, data science, and advanced manufacturing, focusing on theory-guided machine learning for rapid material characterization, AI-enabled manufacturing for process optimization, and accelerated aerospace qualification. His group collaborates widely with aerospace OEMs and government partners, developing patented technologies and AI-driven solutions now adopted in industry. Zobeiry also leads professional courses and workshops on physics-informed machine learning and data-driven manufacturing, helping bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI research and applied aerospace materials and process engineering.
Structural Adhesive Bonding Materials & Processes
Instructor: Dan Ruffner
Structural adhesive bonding remains one of the most powerful (yet often misunderstood) enabling technologies in composite structures. This tutorial provides a clear and highly practical exploration of how bonded systems actually work, why they fail, and what it takes to achieve consistent high-performance results. Participants will examine the full bond system, including adherend surfaces, adhesives, surface preparation, primers, and the interphase region that forms between layers. Special attention is given to key concepts such as wet-out behavior, viscosity effects, application-window tradeoffs, and the influence of the "weakest component" on total system capability.
Through decades of hands-on manufacturing and engineering experience, the instructor demystifies the physics, materials interactions, and process variables inside a bond line barely seven-thousandths of an inch thick, revealing why successful bonding requires rigorous coordination across development, manufacturing, and fielding. This tutorial is ideal for engineers looking to improve reliability, prevent failures, and elevate their understanding of adhesive bonding from fundamental principles to real-world application.
Dan Ruffner
Dan Ruffner retired from The Boeing Company after a distinguished 30-year career supporting composite and bonded-structure manufacturing for both rotorcraft and fixed-wing platforms. He also taught composites and bonding for 15 years to senior and graduate engineering students at Arizona State University. Ruffner continues to teach and consult across industry, specializing in cure-cycle development, process modeling, and adhesive-bond system performance. He has contributed to the Composite Materials Handbook (CMH-17) for more than three decades and currently serves as co-chair of the Materials and Process Working Group. His longstanding commitment to composite materials education, standards development, and manufacturing innovation continues to support the advancement of high-performance aerospace structures.
Ceramic Matrix Composites
Instructor: Dr. Gregory N. Morscher
Ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) have rapidly transitioned from research materials to critical enablers of modern high-temperature aerospace systems. This tutorial provides a comprehensive introduction to the unique properties, behaviors, and design considerations that distinguish CMCs from traditional metallic solutions such as Ni-based superalloys. Attendees will learn foundational CMC classifications, processing approaches, and key mechanical performance characteristics that determine suitability for hot-section engine applications and other extreme environments.
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The session then examines the high-temperature performance challenges such as creep rupture, stressed-oxidation behavior, and the essential role of coatings in ensuring structural reliability. Design implications, spanning thermal management, life prediction, and architecture selection, are discussed in the context of real-world development pathways. Led by a leading expert with more than thirty years of CMC research, testing, and government/industry program experience, this tutorial equips participants with the insight needed to evaluate and apply CMCs in next-generation aerospace systems.
Gregory N. Morscher
Gregory N. Morscher has led ceramic matrix composite (CMC) research and development for more than thirty years. He spent two decades at NASA Lewis/Glenn Research Center supporting major programs that advanced SiC-based CMC technologies. After joining the University of Akron in 2009, he served as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering until his recent retirement and founded Materials and Composites Solutions, LLC. His work covers the full lifecycle of CMCs, including constituent development, processing, fiber architecture, mechanical behavior, and life-prediction methods. Morscher holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Case Western Reserve University, has authored over 200 refereed publications, is co-inventor on a patent, and has earned multiple honors from NASA, ASME, and the American Ceramic Society, where he is a Fellow.
