Contact

Direct Contact

Dr. Donald Radford
Dr. DonALD W. Radford
Lab Director, Principal Investigator

Phone: 970-491-8677
Email: donald.radford@colostate.edu

Dr. Radford is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1987, his M.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1982 and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1980. Dr. Radford’s research focuses on advanced manufacturing of composite materials, including direct digital manufacture incorporating robotic automation systems. He has been involved in research related to process induced distortion in composites, viscoelastic constitutive modeling, advanced polymer and polymer foam processing, damage assessment and repair of composites and high temperature composite materials.

Location

3317 W Vine Drive, Fort Collins, CO 80521
Factory aerial view

The Composite Materials, Manufacture and Structures Laboratory (CMMS) is located at 3317 W Vine Drive in The Advanced Manufacturing and Materials Research Center at the Factory, 5 miles west of CSU’s main campus in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The Advanced Manufacturing and Materials Research Center at the Factory is on a 10-acre site.  Factory A, the Laboratory Building, is a 14,000-square-foot facility which was built in 1958 by the Silvaire Aircraft Company for the manufacture of an all-metal aircraft.  Factory B is a 6,000-square-foot office complex, immediately West of Factory A, which includes faculty and graduate student offices as well as a conference room and small classroom. The site served as CSU’s Agricultural Engineering Research Center from the 1960s until 2002 when it became the Motorsport Engineering Research Center for the next 15 years.

The Composite Materials, Manufacture, and Structures Laboratory, initiated in the fall of 1989 to address research and educational issues related to composite materials, has been located at The Factory since 2004. Renovations to Factory A, in 2017, for three interdisciplinary laboratories, Advanced Computational Materials Engineering Laboratory, Multifunctional Polymers and Composites Laboratory, and Nanostructured Materials and Nanomechanics Laboratory, expanded the scope of the research at the facility to maintain its roots in CSU research.

Mechanical Engineering Labs at The Factory

Additional Mechanical Engineering Labs