Dr. Steven R. Schmid, Ph.D., P.E., FASME, FSME, Belk-Woodward Distinguished Professor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, will present a talk titled, “Manufacturing Topics with Advances Scaffolds.”

Abstract: 

Hard tissue scaffolds are an established technology, where outstanding bone ingrowth materials have been available for many decades. The gold standard for scaffolds is Trabecular Metal, a highly porous metal foam produced by pyrolysis and chemical vapor deposition of tantalum. This material has demonstrated full vascularity in bone ingrowth. However, there are throughput concerns for the CVD reaction chambers, as efforts to scale the process have been unsuccessful to date. Therefore, there is a strong desire to produce stackable preforms and then plastically deform them to the desired shape, at which time they are laser spot welded or diffusion bonded to an implant surface. Modeling and experiments of bending and springbuck of scaffold sheets will be presented, which lead to simplification of manufacture and open the design space for Trabecular Metal. In addition, a new scaffold concept will be presented for scaffolds that interface with the human body in a more active way.

 Biography:

Dr. Steven R. Schmid received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology; Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees at Northwestern University; was a professor for over 25 years at the University of Notre Dame, and is currently the Belk-Woodward Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  He conducts research and teaches courses in the general fields of manufacturing, metal forming, tribology, and design. He has won research awards for his manufacturing and orthopedic implant research, and has conducted over $20 million in externally funded research.

Of his textbooks, Manufacturing Engineering and Technology (with S. Kalpakjian) is the world's most popular manufacturing textbook. Manufacturing Processes for Engineering Materials, Schey’s Tribology in Metalworking, Fundamentals of Machine Elements and Fundamentals of Fluid Film Lubrication are some of his other books.  He has won numerous best paper and teaching awards.

In 2012-2013, Dr. Schmid was the first Faculty Fellow at the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office, and served as the Associate Director for Research Partnerships. He played a key role in the design of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (Manufacturing USA) program. From 2016-2019 he served as Program Director for the Advanced Manufacturing Program at the National Science Foundation, where he started the SME Blue Skies program and reorganized the manufacturing programs into the current over-arching Advanced Manufacturing program.  

Dr. Schmid has served as an International Delegate for SME (equivalent to Board member), and as President of the North American Manufacturing Research Institute. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He is the Director of the Center for Additive Manufacturing of Advanced Ceramics (CAMAC) at UNC Charlotte.

He was awarded the SME Gold Medal in 2019, the Award of Merit (a lifetime achievement award) by the Manufacturing Engineering Society of Spain in 2020, and the David Dornfeld Innovation Award in 2023.