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In an ideal world, a jet engine turbine blade would never crack, would never fatigue, would withstand as high a temperature as we can impose, and would be as light and as strong as we can imagine. In the real world, to take even partial steps towards such goals, we need a deep understanding of materials performance at many length and time scales. At nano and meso scales, the mismatch between elastic and plastic properties of each grain in a polycrystalline material results in local stress concentrations and in crack nucleation which eventually limits the life and performance of a design. Understanding the nature and the source of local stress heterogeneities and their impact on the macroscopic behaviour require development of numerical methods describing each length and time scale, approaches to bridge between methods, and the use or development of cutting edge experimental techniques to validate the numerical results.
Our research focuses on the development of different numerical methods and on the linking of them to diffraction and image based experimental techniques. At MSDL we seek to explain the effects of various environments on the performance and integrity of polycrystalline materials.
Research topics:
- Mechanics of materials across length and time scales- both modeling and experimental.
- Fatigue, fracture, and (irradiation) creep.
- Finite element, crystal plasticity, and dislocation dynamics.
- Synchrotron x-ray, neutron, and electron diffraction/imaging.
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Meet us at
Feb 2023: EBSD analysis of Zr-2.5Nb CANDU pressure tubes, a new paper from the group: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2023.154321
Dec 2022: A new paper from the group: CPFE modeling of dislocations and hydrogen diffusion https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechmat.2022.104544
Nov 2022: Several PhD positions are available in the area of neutron irradiation effects. Click here for more information.
Nov 2022: Congratulations to Saiedeh for defending her PhD proposal sucessfully.
Sep 2022: MSDL welcomes five new students: Masoud Taherijam (PhD), Amirhossein Mozafari (PhD), and Khaled El-Sobahi (MESc), Brandon Kuo (Undergrad), Caitlyn Ruck (Research Assistant)
Aug 2022: in-situ neutron diffraction and additive manufacturing of Hastelloy-X, a new paper from the group: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2022.111030
Selected Publications