The School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering Seminar Series, “When AM Leaves the Lab: Constraint-Driven Design in Expeditionary Environments” Presented by Dr. Albert E. Patterson
About the event
When AM Leaves the Lab: Constraint-Driven Design in Expeditionary Environments
Presented by Dr. Albert E. Patterson, Assistant Professor, Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Texas A&M University
Abstract:
Additive manufacturing (AM) is often promoted as an enabling technology for distributed and expeditionary production. However, most design methodologies remain implicitly tied to stable, infrastructure-rich environments (such as fixed factories). In contrast, expeditionary contexts are defined by constrained energy availability, limited material supply, uncertain environmental conditions, and reduced access to post-processing and quality assurance. These factors fundamentally alter what it means for a design to be “manufacturable” at a sufficient level of quality and functionality. This talk presents a constraint-driven design framework for AM systems operating in expeditionary environments, grounded in the principles of manufacturability-driven design and realizability-aware engineering. Rather than treating constraints as post hoc filters, the approach formalizes them as primary drivers of design decisions, shaping geometry, process selection, and system architecture from the outset. Key constraint classes are examined, including energy budgets, material logistics, process stability, and lifecycle considerations such as repair and reuse. The framework integrates structured modeling and simulation with experimentally informed process capability limits to establish actionable design guidance under uncertainty. Case studies illustrate how identical design objectives can lead to fundamentally different solutions when evaluated under expeditionary constraints versus conventional manufacturing settings. Particular emphasis is placed on translating high-level constraints into quantifiable design limits that can be embedded within optimization and decision-support tools. The talk concludes by outlining research directions in constraint-aware digital twins, hybrid manufacturing strategies, and educational models for training engineers to design for realizability in resource-limited environments. The goal is to move beyond “design for AM” toward “design for what can be built,” enabling robust, field-deployable manufacturing systems.
Biography:
Albert E. Patterson, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution, with affiliate appointments in the Departments of Mechanical and Multidisciplinary Engineering and Materials Science at Texas A&M University. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as BS and MS degrees in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is the director of the Manufacturability-Driven Design Lab at Texas A&M University, where he leads an interdisciplinary team to solve fundamental and applied problems in design for manufacturing, manufacturing science, and life cycle systems engineering. He has published over 100 academic and technical papers on these topics. Dr. Patterson is active with several major professional societies and serves on the Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle (DFMLC) Technical Committee for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as well as the Integrated Design and Manufacturing (IDM) Technical Committee for the Society of Automotive Engineers. Prior to pursuing an academic career, Dr. Patterson worked for several years in the aerospace industry with the Boeing Company and the US Department of Defense through the GMD program under the Missile Defense Agency and the automated construction field with Autonomous and Unmanned Vehicle Systems Lab and the US Army Corps of Engineers. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Progress in Additive Manufacturing from Springer-Nature.