Research
Research
Applied research on additive manufacturing and material behavior under real operating conditions — not just design and print, but what happens to a printed part afterward.
PLA-Based Additive Manufacturing and Thermal Aging Analysis of UAV Airfoil Profiles
TÜBİTAK 1002-A research project measuring the aerodynamic performance degradation of FDM-printed PLA UAV wing sections after controlled thermal exposure — targeting a binary maintenance decision rule for UAV field operations.
Research Statement
My work concentrates on the point where additive manufacturing meets material behavior: how FDM-printed parts change over time under environmental load, and when that change becomes engineering-significant rather than cosmetic. In my TÜBİTAK 1002-A project, I'm examining this question through thermal aging of PLA UAV wing sections — measuring dimensional deviation and aerodynamic efficiency loss, and translating continuous degradation data into a binary maintenance decision rule.
Longer term, I want to deepen this into nano-scale material characterization — understanding how a material's structure at the nano/micro scale governs its mechanical behavior. The interest traces back to an 11th-grade chemistry class where I first encountered graphene; I turned that curiosity into an independent research project that reached the semi-finals of TEKNOFEST's Biotechnology and Innovation category (2020–2021), and it's shaped my direction since.
At the graduate level, I want to work specifically on graphene and advanced materials — including thermal aging and degradation behavior, the same class of problem my TÜBİTAK research applies to a different material system.