MAE Seminar: Ashley Bucsek, Ph.D. (University of Minnesota), "Establishing the Relationships between Local Micromechanics and Material Performance using 3D X-Ray Diffraction"

Description

ABSTRACT Advanced materials are internationally recognized as a foundation for new capabilities, tools, and technologies that meet urgent societal needs. “Advanced materials” broadly describes innovative materials that have atypical sizes, microstructures, and responses. These atypical characteristics enable major, previously impossible technological breakthroughs, yet many advanced materials owe their desirable properties to complex underlying micromechanics. Establishing the relationships between these local micromechanics and material performance is critical to the widespread implementation and evolution of advanced materials. Toward these goals, I utilize modern 3D X-ray diffraction techniques that offer the capability to measure the deformation and microstructure evolution inside bulk materials, in situ, and across nine orders of magnitude in length scales (nm to mm). Thus, these techniques can be used to simultaneously measure local microstructure events and the consequent macroscopic response. Guided by 3D X-ray diffraction experiments, I present several studies showing how material performance is dictated by local micromechanics and discuss the design approach of using structure and microstructure engineering to control micromechanics in ways that optimize material performance. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Ashley Bucsek is a President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Department at the University of Minnesota. Her research brings together cutting- edge experiments and micromechanical theory to accelerate the prediction and manipulation of deformation mechanisms in crystalline materials, especially structural and functional materials. She has used and developed synchrotron x-ray diffraction techniques for studying advanced materials at the Advanced Photon Source, Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Diffraction Source, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. She has worked as a visiting scientist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, is a former Student Board Member on the Board of ASM’s International Organization on Shape Memory and Superelastic Technologies, and is the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and NSF Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide Award. She received an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines.