The University of Texas at Austin
College of Engineering

Dave Bourell and Kaushik Alayavalli won the best poster award at the Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium


photo of Dave Bourell and his graduate student, Kaushik Alayavalli holding the Best Paper Award and two of the graphite wafers they make

Professor Dave Bourell (right) and Kaushik Alayavalli display Alayavalli's Best Poster Award. They are holding the graphite waferers they make.




AUSTIN, TEXAS—August 11, 2008

Dave Bourell and his graduate student, Kaushik Alayavalli, won the best poster award at the Ninteenth Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium held in Austin, Texas the first week of August 2008. Attended by scientists and researchers from over a dozen countries, the technical conference is generally recognized as the premier research conference on additive manufacturing in the world. The poster was selected from over twenty submissions and was titled, "Fabrication of Electrically Conductive, Fluid Impermeable Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) Graphite Bipolar Plates by Indirect Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)". The award includes a certificate, a check for $100 and a year's subscription to the Rapid Prototyping Journal. The research was funded by a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.

Fuel cells represent an alternative energy source. One of the critical components is the bipolar plate which separates individual proton exchange membrane assemblies. Graphite is a promising material for bipolar plates since it is electrically conducting, non-liquid impermeable and tolerant of the fuel cell operating environment. One issue is that graphite plates traditionally are machined, and the thin bipolar plates are easily fractured. Kaushik Alayavalli is doing his doctoral research under Professor Bourell's supervision. His research involves using a novel, advanced, additive manufacturing process, selective laser sintering, to produce graphite bipolar plates that do not require machining. The plates are made by fusing graphite powder with a phenolic binder followed by thermal decomposing of the binder which transforms to additional carbon. The porous part is then infiltrated with a variant of superglue to produce the final, gas-impermeable part.