Project Grant DESC0025195

This three-year, $354,328 National Science Foundation project grant will fund research to develop predictive simulations of grain boundary network evolution in metals and ceramics. The Carnegie Mellon University research team will work to uncover mechanisms of grain boundary migration through iterative experimentation and simulation. X-ray microscopy will be used to measure grain boundary structure changes over time in ferritic iron, nickel, and strontium titanate samples during in situ...

This three-year National Science Foundation project grant of $536,195 supports research into abnormal grain growth in ultrafine grained metals under high cycle loading at room temperature. The principal investigators will conduct high-throughput characterization of cyclic-load-induced grain growth in ultrafine grained metal films using scanning electron microscopy with electron backscatter diffraction. Six different metallic films with varying degrees of elastic anisotropy and face-centered...

This three-year $397,284 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) will support research at the University of Michigan on the role of diffusion-induced grain boundary migration in alloy oxidation. The university will investigate how deformation and small grain sizes impact the oxidation response of select structural alloys. Researchers will elucidate the key role of diffusion along moving grain boundaries in supplying elements...

This Project Grant, awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Directorate (CFDA 47.041), aims to develop a deeper understanding of fracture and damage tolerance in micro-architectured materials composed of brittle ceramic or ceramic-like parent materials. The $500,000 award to the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (Tees), a division of the Texas A&M University System, will facilitate damage tolerance and structural integrity analysis to enable the reliable use...

This two-year, $150,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program will fund research exploring phase stability and related deformation mechanisms in refractory high-entropy alloys. Specifically, the University of Tennessee will investigate precursors to phase transformations, such as structure-induced local lattice distortions and chemical short-range ordering, in disordered multi-principal component alloys. The research aims to determine the...

This $142,686 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program will support research at Northwestern University to investigate the mechanism behind an "abnormal columnar-to-equiaxed transition" (CET) phenomenon observed in metals processed using wire-laser directed energy deposition (DED) techniques. The research will leverage state-of-the-art synchrotron X-ray experiments and numerical simulations to study the influence of...

This $599,998 federal Project Grant award from the Department of Defense (CFDA 12.431 - Basic Scientific Research) supports research at Boise State University and Purdue University to understand how irradiation induces unusual amorphous-to-crystalline phase transformations in structural ceramics and their associated mechanical resilience. The primary work under this 3-year award involves molecular dynamics simulations at Purdue to model the crystalline phase nucleation process and internal...

This $876,311 National Science Foundation project grant funds research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to design grain interfaces in polycrystalline metallic materials that improve damage resistance. The grant is part of NSF's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), which supports fundamental research and education in these fields to strengthen the national science enterprise. The three-year project beginning January 2022 will investigate functionalizing grain boundaries...

The National Science Foundation awarded the University of Illinois a $150,000 Project Grant under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) to conduct collaborative research on nanoscale structural and compositional instability-driven ductility in refractory high-entropy alloys. The research will develop an atomic-level understanding of how the manufacturing of refractory high-entropy alloys relates to their ductility and tensile strength properties. It will also seek to...

This $195,750 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) supports research and educational activities at Lehigh University aimed at gaining fundamental insights into the segregation of multiple elemental species to grain boundaries and its effects on grain growth in nanocrystalline metallic alloys. The research involves developing theoretical and computational models to simulate the dynamics of grain boundary segregation...