New Grant: Award Supports Development of Modeling and Machine-learning Techniques for Materials under Extremes

Oct. 5, 2023 - Principal investigator: Penghui Cao, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering

Award: $1.02 million over five years

Funding agency: U.S. Department of Energy

Project: Center for Additively Manufactured Complex Systems under Extremes

With an $8 million award to five academic institutions, the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) has established a new Center of Excellence aimed at advancing our fundamental understanding of how additively manufactured complex systems respond to extreme environments. Researchers at University of Alabama Birmingham, UCI, Stanford, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Tuskegee University will work in conjunction with scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Lab and Sandia National Laboratories on the project.

The Center for Additively Manufactured Complex Systems under Extremes is one of NNSA’s nine Stewardship Science Academic Alliances, with a mission of maintaining and enhancing the safety, security and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile; reducing the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; providing the U.S. Navy with safe and militarily effective nuclear propulsion; and responding to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U. S. and abroad.

Cao, whose research focuses on performance of materials and how they behave in challenging conditions, will spearhead the simulation and modeling efforts. His team seeks to reveal the nature and mechanisms underlying a material’s phase transformation, microstructure evolution, strength and plasticity under high stress, high strain rate and high pressure. As part of the new center, he will develop and exploit energy landscape sampling methods and machine-learning techniques to predict microstructure change and phase transformation across a broad range of loading rates, from quasi-static to dynamic. 

More information: https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-award-100-million-stewardship-science-academic-alliances-centers-excellence

– Lori Brandt