Seminars

Over the past five decades there has been an intense effort to understand and control the thermomechanical response of materials in extreme environments. A number of technologies critical to our safety and well-being stand to benefit from such understanding including next-generation fission and fusion reactors, defense systems, spacecraft shielding, vehicular crashworthiness, and advanced manufacturing. Materials in such extreme environments often exhibit complex, somewhat non-intuitive mechanical behavior that is difficult to predict with empirical or phenomenological models. Here we discuss our development of a number of multiscale, mechanism-based models that help unravel this inherent complexity. This seminar will focus primarily on the development of an atomistically-informed crystal plasticity framework for deformation and failure of shock compressed single crystals and polycrystals. We further utilize this high-fidelity modeling framework to provide key insights into the development of reduced-order models, which are helpful in guiding the microstructural design of advanced light-weight armor and shielding materials.