Hello! I’m Connor Armstrong, a Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. candidate, President’s Fellow, and GEM Fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology. I am currently working in the Active Materials and Additive Manufacturing Laboratory with Professor Jerry Qi. I received my undergraduate and Master’s degrees from the University of Maryland College Park where I was an NSF funded graduate research fellow.
My current research utilizes the open framework and broad material versatility of DIW AM in addition to leveraging active learning models to address new application areas using novel polymeric materials. This work has developed a single-stream hybrid AM process for automated fabrication of complex woven fiber-reinforced polymer composite (FRPC) parts with thermoset epoxy matrices. This aspect of my research seeks to address limitations of conventional labor intensive and geometrically limited manufacturing techniques of epoxy matrix FRPC parts. Additionally, I have developed an AM technique capable of dynamically reconfiguring print nozzle orientation to enable fabrication of both static and functional structures. The goal of this component of my research is to develop a process for the automated fabrication of complex high strength structures in unstructured and/or human-limited environments using DIW AM. Unstructured can be defined as substrates with uneven surfaces, or those in unconventional orientations such as upside-down or horizontal. Importantly, my research allows for printing of high strength structures upon substrates which cannot be moved, or reached, due to sensitivity or size which would preclude conventional post-processing techniques for developing robust thermoset polymer networks. I have demonstrated these AM approaches by fabricating high-strength, self-supporting parts in inverted and horizontal environments.
My passion for research began in high school during my summer internships at NASA Goddard, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and the Naval Surface Warfare Research Center – Carderock. I continued this passion for research into college, participating in the Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program (NREIP); I also conducted undergraduate research at the Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center and the Advanced Manufacturing and Polymer Processing Lab at the University of Maryland College Park. During my Master’s I focused on 3D printing technologies, polymer composites, and soft robotics in my thesis: “Dynamic Control of Fiber Orientation via a Soft-Actuating Nozzle.”