Accelerating the Development of Phase-Transforming Heterogeneous Materials: Application to High Temperature Shape Memory Alloys
High Temperature Shape Memory Alloys (HTSMAs) are alloys that exhibit large shape changes at high stresses and high temperatures. If the shape change behavior had be controlled and tailored, HTSMAs can be used as robust and compact solid-state actuators with performance exceeding any other current technology. Since the behavior of HTSMAs is highly dependent on chemistry and processing, tailoring of HTSMAs for specific applications using solely experimental means is unrealistic. This award supports the development of a framework that can allow for the design of chemistry and processing steps to achieve a given performance requirement in these materials. The immediate technological impact of the work is the accelerated development of high-temperature solid-state actuators for the aerospace and automotive industries. Furthermore, the award will expose seven graduate and two to four undergraduate students to a highly interdisciplinary research project, combining ideas from materials science, mechanics, computer science, machine learning and design. The work supports efforts related to the Materials Genome Initiative by integrating experimental and computational research, making digital data accessible, and training the future workforce. The overall framework will be disseminated through conventional channels, while the models, model parameters and data generated through this research will be made available to the wider scientific community through an instance of the Materials Data Curation System developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.