Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., announces that ASM member Prof. Xinghang Zhang has been awarded a $450,000 grant from the Dept. of Energy to investigate methods for increasing the strength of aluminum alloys.
“One of the major issues with aluminum alloys is that strength is much lower than steels,” he said. “Aluminum is ductile, but it’s very soft.” The research will be done at the microscopic level by using a transmission electron microscope that can reveal the atomic arrangement inside aluminum. The School of Materials Engineering recently acquired an advanced transmission electron microscope for the deformation project and future research.
“This grant allows us to explore fundamental science on mechanical behavior of nanotwinned aluminum and could eventually lead to the design of high strength and ductile aluminum alloys,” he said.
Nanotwinned metals can be used in many applications because they simultaneously demonstrate high strength and high ductility, characteristics usually thought to be mutually exclusive. Deformation mechanisms describe how a metallic material can change its geometry under external force.
“You have to really look at why an aluminum alloy is soft and what you have to do to make it much stronger and remain ductile,” Prof. Zhang said.
