In the lab of the WVU Microgravity Research Team, undergraduate engineering student Renee Garneau works on a 3D printer that’s custom-designed for operation in little to no gravity. By enabling low-waste manufacture of equipment that can purify water and provide UV shielding, Garneau’s work could enable extended missions into deep space.
(WVU Photo/Brian Persinger)
West Virginia University faculty and students have been researching the effects of 3D printing in a zero-gravity environment. This research will support long-term exploration on spaceships or Mars.
Extended missions in outerspace require that critical materials and equipment be manufactured on-site, instead of transporting them from Earth. Microgravity Research Team members believe 3D-printing is the best way to achieve this.
The team’s recent experiments focused on how a weightless microgravity environment affects 3D printing using titania foam, a material with potential applications ranging from UV blocking to water purification. ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces has published their findings.
“A spacecraft can’t carry infinite resources, so you have to maintain and recycle what you have and 3D printing enables that,” said lead author Jacob Cordonier, a doctoral student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. “You can print only what you need, reducing waste. Our study examined whether a 3D foam made of titanium dioxide could be used to protect against UV radiation in outerspace and purify the water.
“The research also allows us to see gravity’s role in how the foam comes out of the 3D printer nozzle and spreads onto a substrate. We’ve seen differences in the filament shape when printed in microgravity compared to Earth gravity. And by changing additional variables in the printing process, such as writing speed and extrusion pressure, we’re able to paint a clearer image of how all these parameters interact to tune the shape of the filament.”
Cordonier’s co-authors include current and former undergraduate students Kyleigh Anderson, Ronan Butts, Ross O’Hara, Renee Garneau and Nathanael Wimer. John Kuhlman emeritus and Konstantinos Sierros, associate professor and chair of research at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, also contributed to the paper.
Sierros has overseen the Microgravity Research Team’s titania foam studies since 2016. The WVU lab is where the work takes place now, but it was originally done on a Boeing. Students printed foam lines onto glass slides while the plane was in weightlessness for 20 seconds.
“Transporting even a kilogram of material in space is expensive and storage is limited, so we’re looking into what is called ‘in-situ resource utilization,’” Sierros said. “We know the moon contains deposits of minerals very similar to the titanium dioxide used to make our foam, so the idea is you don’t have to transport equipment from here to space because we can mine those resources on the moon and print the equipment that’s necessary for a mission.”
Shields against ultraviolet radiation are necessary equipment. This light is a danger to astronauts, electronics, and other assets in space.
“On Earth, our atmosphere blocks a significant part of UV light — though not all of it, which is why we get sunburned,” Cordonier said. “In space or on the moon, there’s nothing to mitigate it besides your spacesuit or whatever coating is on your spacecraft or habitat.”
To measure titania foam’s effectiveness at blocking UV waves, “we would shine light ranging from the ultraviolet wavelengths up to the visible light spectrum,” he explained. “We measured how much light was getting through the titania foam film we had printed, how much got reflected back and how much was absorbed by the sample. We found that the film blocked nearly all of the UV light from hitting the sample. Very little visible light was allowed through. Even at only 200 microns thick, our material is effective at blocking UV radiation.”
Cordonier stated that the foam exhibited photocatalytic qualities, which means that it could use light to promote chemical reaction that could purify water or air.
Team member Butts, an undergraduate from Wheeling, led experiments in contact angle testing to analyze how changes in temperature affected the foam’s surface energy. Butts called the research “a different type of challenge that students don’t always get to experience,” and said he especially valued the engagement component.
“Our team gets to do a lot of outreach with young students like the Scouts through the Merit Badge University at WVU. We get to show them what we do here as a way to say, ‘Hey, this is something you could do, too,’” Butts said.
According to Sierros, “We’re trying to integrate research into student careers at an early point. We have a student subgroup that’s purely hardware and they make the 3D printers. We have student leaders in materials development and automation. Undergraduates have participated in the entire research process with two NASA grants that are highly competitive. They have published peer-reviewed scientific articles and presented at conferences.”
Garneau, a student researcher from Winchester, Virginia, said her dream is for their 3D printer — custom designed to be compact and automated — to take a six-month trip to the International Space Station. This would allow for a more detailed monitoring of the print process than could be done during the freefall of 20 seconds.
“This was an amazing experience,” Garneau said. “It was the first time I participated in a research project that didn’t have predetermined results like what I have experienced in research-based classes. It was rewarding to analyze data and reach conclusions without predetermined expectations.
“Our approach can help extend space exploration, allowing astronauts to use resources they already have available to them without necessitating a resupply mission.”
-WVU-
mm/10/30/23
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