The University of Kentucky Research Foundation was awarded a $507,288 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation under the Engineering federal grant program (CFDA 47.041) to support research titled "CAREER: THERMOMECHANICAL RESPONSE AND FATIGUE PERFORMANCE OF SURFACE LAYERS ENGINEERED BY FINISH MACHINING: IN-SITU CHARACTERIZATION AND DIGITAL PROCESS TWIN." The five-year award beginning May 1, 2022 will fund the development of a digital process twin approach to model the thermo-mechanical response of surface layers on advanced metals like titanium alloys during finish machining operations. Through in-situ characterization experiments using a novel process characterization testbed and digital image correlation techniques, the researchers aim to gain insights into strain localization effects during finish machining and subsequent fatigue testing of micro-specimens extracted from machined surface layers. Semi-analytical digital process twin models developed through this work will be benchmarked against established finite element modeling to enable more efficient development of finish machining processes.
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