Advanced Structures & Composites Center

UMaine Composites Center’s collaboration with Harbor Technologies, MDOT highlighted in recent MaineBiz article titled, “Building bridges, Harbor Technologies challenges the supremacy of steel and concrete bridge beams.” “Martin Grimnes, founder and CEO of Harbor Technologies Inc. in Brunswick, stands beneath the Union Street Bridge that crosses over Interstate 95 in Bangor. An average of 18,000 […]

  A group of Mechanical Engineering students at the University of Maine used a unique machine – a filament winder – in the UMaine Composites Center’s Kenway Composite Materials Lab to complete their senior capstone project with support of faculty and staff. Eric Wold (from Freeport, ME), Will London (from Carrabassett Valley, ME), and Ben Johnson (from […]

A paper by Dr. Anthony Viselli, Dr. Habib Dagher, and Dr. Bryan Pearce of the University of Maine and Dr. George Forristall of Forristall Ocean Engineering, has been published in the August 2015 edition of Ocean Engineering. The paper is titled: “Estimation of Extreme Wave and Wind Design Parameters for Offshore Wind Turbines in Gulf of […]

An article titled, “Wood–Plastic Composite Technology,” authored by Dr. Douglas Gardner, Dr. Yousoo Han, and graduate student Lu Wang, has been published in the June 2015 Current Forestry Reports. This article is part of the Topical Collection on Wood Structure and Function. Click to view the article, here. The abstract reads: “Wood–plastic composites (WPCs) are […]

Lu Wang is pursuing his Ph.D. in Cellulose Nanofibril-Reinforced Plastics at the University of Maine under advisement of Dr. Douglas Gardner. Their team hopes to produce a 3D printed plastic, combined with Maine nanocellulose, that can compete with industrial synthetic plastics currently on the market. Typically carbon fiber or glass is used in industrial plastics. These […]

A paper titled, “Hydrodynamic Module Coupling in the Offshore Wind Energy Simulation (OWENS) Toolkit,” co-authored graduate student Matthew Fowler, Dr. Andrew Goupee, and others, was awarded the OMAE 2014 Best Paper of Ocean Renewable Energy Symposium. The paper was written in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, Texas A&M University, the University of Maine, and the […]

The University of Maine’s Composites Arch Bridge System, commonly known as “Bridge-In-A-BackpackTM,” was featured in the cover story of Plastics Engineering May 2015. The article titled, “Reinforced Plastics Move into Non-Traditional Markets,” was written Peggy Malnati. Click here to view the full article (PDF). An excerpt from the article follows: Composites for Rapid Bridge Replacement With increasingly unpredictable […]

“Maine’s abundant natural resources have supported various manufacturing industries over the years, most notably the paper industry. But the paper industry doesn’t have the economic impact it once did and people have been talking about other industries that would create jobs in communities like Millinocket, East Millinocket, Bucksport and Lincoln, all of which have lost […]

Dr. Juana Doménech Subirán has joined the UMaine Composites Center for the summer from La Rioja, Spain. She holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from University of País Vasco. Subirán’s current research interest is centered around passive houses, which is a building standard that reduces energy consumption. Passive house standards aim to reduce energy consumption by 60-80% through improved materials and […]