Dr Liang serves as the Director of the High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI), the Deputy Director of NASA Institute for Ultra-Strong Composites by Computational Design (US-COMP), and Sprint Chair Professor. His research interests include aerospace composites and manufacturing, nanomaterials and sensors, and additive manufacturing and advanced materials characterization. Dr. Liang produced more than 160 journal publications, 10,250 Google citations, 37 US patent granted, with the exceptional records of 20 Ph.D. and 32 MS student productivity and advised 25 postdoc fellows.

2025 NASA Symp

Scaled-up continuous carbon nanotube yarn unidirectional composite laminates for high tensile properties

This NASA STRI project focused on exploring scalable nanocomposite technology using continuous high-strength carbon nanotube yarn materials to fabricate composite laminates capable of being scaled up. Employing radiation functionalization to enhance load transfer, unidirectional CNT yarn laminates with the optimal dose of 700 kGy achieved a specific strength and modulus as high as 1.89 GPa/gcm-3 and 258 GPa/gcm-3, respectively. This specific modulus exceeded current state-of-the-art unidirectional CFRPs, opening a new performance region in the Ashby chart for composite applications.

(Previous) NASA Symp

Fundamental understanding and optimization of long-range orders in CNT assemblages for high-performance structural composite applications

This presentation examines our research towards engineering CNT networks to realize high mechanical and electrical performance. We discovered the unique geometrically constrained self-assembling and graphitic crystal packing of flattened and aligned CNTs during the stretching process of CNT networks. The new microstructures can improve the ultimate surface contact among the CNTs to substantially improve load transfer and mechanical properties. This feature provides the potential to realize microstructures capable of achieving desired long-range orders, fewer defects, and ordered crystalline packing, which are essential for fully transferring the CNT mechanical and electrical properties into macroscopic composite materials.