The current landscape of digital design and fabrication is one of constant innovation, giving rise to emergent materials and novel additive processes that enable significant increases in component performance and durability and significant decreases in cost and manufacturing lead times. A substantial impediment to these potential improvements is the cost and time associated with materials testing, typically requiring a broad suite of testing to determine numerous material properties and their associated variability. This is exacerbated for testing in high temperature environments where time-dependent thermal processes are active. 

To transition these innovative concepts to practice, the speed and cost of test, evaluation, and modelling techniques must improve to match the development cycle. This opportunity seeks to explore novel, reduced order, and accelerated methods & techniques to rapidly generate data for informed decision making for fabrication process iteration and material property verification and validation for materials in extreme environments. Of specific interest is creep, fatigue, and their interaction. 

 

Kulkarni, A, James, A, Kamel, A. Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technology Developments for Extreme Environment Gas Turbine Applications. Matls. Perf. Charact. Jun 2021, 10(2): 146-160 

Smith, T.M., Kantzos, C.A., Zarkevich, N.A. et al. A 3D printable alloy designed for extreme environments. Nature 617, 513–518 (2023) 

Choi, H, Lim, HJ, Yun, GJ. An integrated unified elasto-viscoplastic fatigue and creep damage model with characterization method for structural analysis of nickel-based high-temperature structure. International Journal of Damage Mechanics. 2023;32(1):73-102. 

key words

Turbine engine; Structural dynamics; Additive manufacturing; Fatigue; Creep; Damping; Prediction models; High temperature; Extreme environments; Material properties;

Citizenship:  Open to U.S. citizens

Level:  Open to Postdoctoral and Senior applicants