The JOINT Center
The Jointed Interfaces Technology (JOINT) Center is a pioneering collaboration among industry, government, and academia—established to lead the world in advancing both the science and practice of jointed structure design.
The JOINT Center brings together experts across sectors to accelerate innovation in modeling, testing, and applying jointed interface technologies. Our goal: to push the state-of-the-art forward, reduce barriers to entry for new participants, deliver ready-to-use solutions for industry, and train the workforce of tomorrow.
Technology Focus Areas
The JOINT Center focuses on three transformative thrust areas:
- Jointed Interfaces in Hypersonic and Extreme Environments: Investigating how large thermal gradients affect the nonlinear dynamics of load-bearing joints in aerospace systems and discovering the Tribomechadynamics of multi-material interfaces in ablative environments.
- Scaling Joint Modeling to Large Structures: Creating new simulation paradigms to extend knowledge of joint mechanics to structures with 1000s of interfaces and building efficient and accurate simulation tools for designers.
- Wear and Degradation: Predicting how structures evolve and degrade with time due to wear and erosive environments and creating digital models that accurately capture the ageing of structures with jointed interfaces.
Our Mission
JOINT will advance the future of jointed interface technology through innovation and discovery. It is a pioneering center of excellence for scientific knowledge and experimental characterization of jointed interfaces. JOINT operates as a collaborative partnership between industry, academia and government to develop state-of-the-art design tools, train the next generation of researchers and practitioners, and enable more efficient and robust jointed structures.
Why Join the JOINT Center?
The JOINT Center is being launched as a National Science Foundation Industry–University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC). This unique model offers multiple benefits to industry members:
- NSF covers most administrative and overhead costs
- Royalty-free access to IP for all full members
- Full access to Center-developed software tools
- Free online workforce training courses developed by Center faculty
- Early access to cutting-edge research across three universities
- Exclusive recruiting opportunities for top graduate students and postdocs
- Use of world-class experimental and computational facilities
- Opportunities to engage in collaborative research with other members
For information about joining the Center, contact the Center Director, Prof. Matthew Brake (brake@rice.edu).