Facilities

Continuous Carbon-Fiber Composites 3D Printing Facility features a CF3D® Enterprise system that lays down uninterrupted carbon fiber tows in a fast-curing resin along freely programmed paths, producing aerospace-grade parts directly from digital designs. This capability is essential because continuous fibers carry load end-to-end, delivering exceptional stiffness and strength-to-weight with minimal tooling and waste. It lets us align fibers with load paths, print curved spars and booms, open lattice shells, and integrated joints, and rapidly iterate from concept to test. The facility powers Illinois research in deployable spacecraft structures and in-space manufacturing while giving students and partners hands-on access to next-generation composite fabrication.

The High-Fidelity LEO Environment Simulation Facility is used to test material durability by exposing samples to the hazards of Low Earth Orbit. Inside a high-vacuum chamber, materials are subjected to a high-flux beam of atomic oxygen (AO), intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation, and rapid thermal cycling to replicate the degradation mechanisms encountered by materials in LEO structures. 

This facility includes four chambers with the following capabilities or equipment:

• Thermal plates and shroud (-80°C to +170°C ) with PRESTO A80 Highly Dynamic Temperature Control System
• High vacuum below 1 × 10-7 torr
• Two Vacuum UV solar radiation sources (I<200 nm)
• Atomic oxygen source (tunable AO stream, high purity: 80-95% AO, energy: 4.5 - 5 eV, and temperature: 0.2-1eV)
• In-chamber load frame with space-compatible actuators and load cell
• In situ 3D digital image correlation system with two high-speed cameras and six quasi-static cameras

Composite Manufacturing and 3D Printing:

1. Out-of-Autoclave Composite Curing Oven
2. A large Autoclave for Conventional Composite Manufacturing
3. Anisoprint A3 Continuous Fiber Composite Printer
4. Markforged Mark II (Gen 2) Continuous Fiber Composite Printer
5. In-house-built space-compatible continuous fiber composite printer.
6. Ultimaker S7 Pro Bundle: multi-material FDM 3D printer. 
7. Stratasys J35 Pro: an advanced PolyJet desktop 3D printer.
8. Two Bambu Lab P1S 3D Printers with AMS
9. One Bambu Lab H2D Dual-Material 3D Printer with AMS 2
10. Multiple Prusa i3 3D Printers

Soft Electronics Fabrication Equipment:

1. LPKF ProtoLaser R4: picosecond-fast laser micro-material processing without heat generation. 
2. Other instruments: Powerlab 12-channel DAQ, Keithley sources and meters, NI DMM, chip bonding station, and many others

The main O₂ plasma asher used for AO studies is located in the Imaging Technology Group (ITG) facility at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. It is a March Plasmod radio-frequency (13.56 MHz) plasma asher equipped with the March GCM-200 gas controller, currently configured for research-grade O₂ to generate oxygen plasma. The asher can be operated in semiautomatic mode, running for up to 99 minutes and 99 seconds, or in manual mode for indefinite operation. It is powered by a 250 W solid-state generator that delivers a high plasma density.

A second asher is also located at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. It is a Diener Zepto radio-frequency (40 kHz) asher, which currently uses air to generate plasma but will soon be equipped with research-grade O₂. This asher can run in semiautomatic mode for up to 2 hours and ~20 minutes, and it is powered by a 100 W generator.

The two-stage light gas gun facility is designed to simulate hypervelocity impact events typically encountered in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) and low Earth orbit (LEO), such as micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) impacts on spacecraft structures or particle impacts on hypersonic vehicles. The facility uses light gases (He and H₂) to propel millimeter-size projectiles to velocities of 1–7.5 km/s (up to ~16,700 mph). A gas compressor system enables clean and efficient operation.

Diagnostics include measurements of incoming and exit velocities, high-speed optical imaging, and other monitoring techniques. Data obtained from high-velocity and hypervelocity impact studies using this system can be applied to extract damage parameters, Hugoniot equations of state, spall strength, and related material response properties.

The laser-driven flyer launching facility provides unique capabilities for studying the high-strain-rate behavior of materials subjected to impacts in space, including LEO and VLEO environments. A powerful laser launches millimeter- and submillimeter-scale flyers at velocities of 1–5 km/s to conduct impact studies on materials and to extract damage parameters, Hugoniot equations of state, spall strength, and other key properties. Flyers are accelerated using either an Nd:YAG laser (2 J) or an Nd:Glass laser (10 J). The facility can operate under both vacuum and atmospheric conditions; in atmospheric mode, the Nd:YAG laser can propel flyers to speeds approaching Mach 15.​​

Through our multiscale simulations, spanning density functional theory (DFT) calculations and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at the atomistic scale to Monte Carlo and finite element methods at the mesoscale, we are equipped to analyze a wide range of space materials subjected to extreme thermo-chemo-mechanical environments. These include ablative heat shields for spacecraft, ion thrusters, and nanocomposite space materials (e.g., boron nitride nanotube reinforced composites). Our motivation is to understand fundamental material degradation processes, predict material response across scales, and design and optimize material microstructures to ensure survivability and extend in-space service lifetimes.​