The main focus areas of our research group are processing-microstructure-mechanical property relationships in advanced metallic materials, ultrafine-grained materials, severe plastic deformation, martensitic phase transformation, magneto-thermo-mechanical coupling, deformation twinning, and micro-mechanical constitutive modeling of deformation mechanisms. We mainly focus on materials that demonstrate at least two of the following mechanisms: dislocation slip, martensitic transformation, and deformation twinning. The materials currently under investigation are:
- Conventional Shape Memory Alloys (Ni-Ti)
- High Temperature Shape Memory Alloys (Ni-Ti-Hf, Ni-Ti-Pd, Ni-Ti-Pt)
- Ferromagnetic and Meta-Magnetic Shape Memory Alloys (Co-Ni-Al, Co-Ni-Ga, Ni-Mn-(Ga,In, Co, Sn), and Ni-Fe-Ga)
- Iron-based Shape Memory Alloys (Fe-Ni-Co-Ti, Fe-Ni-Co-Al, Fe-Ni-Mn-Al)
- Ni-free Biomedical Shape Memory Alloys
- Bulk Nanocrystalline Materials (Mg, Ti, Nb, Zr, Al, Cu, W, Ta and their alloys, Stainless Steel)
- Transformation-Induced Plasticity (TRIP) Steels
- Austenitic Steels (Hadfield Steel and Stainless Steels)
- Interstitial Free (IF) Steels
We use the following tools in the investigation of these materials:
- Materials Synthesis and Processing (Vacuum arc melting, Equal Channel Angular Extrusion or Equal Channel Angular Pressing, Spark Plasma Sintering, Micro and Nano Powder Consolidation, rolling, wire drawing, swaging, etc.)
- Mechanical Testing (Monotonic and cyclic testing of single crystals and polycrystals at temperatures from -100 ºC up to 1000 ºC)
- Microstructural investigations (Optical microscopy, SEM, TEM, X-Ray, OIM, Crystallographic Texture)
- Functional Characterization (SQUID Magnetometer, DSC, PPMS, Scanning Hall Probe Microscopy)
- Modeling (Microstructure evolution-based crystal plasticity models)
The group’s research is funded by several funding agencies such as NSF – CMII, NSF – DMR, AFOSR, ARL, QNRF, NASA, The U.S. CRDF, and several industries.
Our group has an extensive national and international collaboration with the scientists from Argonne and Los Alamos National Laboratories (Dr.s Yang Ren – LANL, Irene Beyerlein -LANL, Carlos N. Tome – LANL, Don Broan – LANL), NASA – Glenn Research Center (Dr. Ron Noebe), University of Paderborn in Germany (Prof. Hans J. Maier), Tohoku University in Japan (Professor Ryosuke Kainuma), Shangi Jia-Tong University in China (Prof. Liu), University of Balearic Islands in Spain (Prof. Jaume Pons), Siberian Physical and Technical Institute of Russia (Prof. Yuriy I. Chumlyakov and Dr. Irina Kireeva), Karadeniz Technical University in Turkey (Prof. Gencaga Purcek), and Hacettepe University in Turkey (Professor Benat Kockar).