The aerospace industry offers the most challenging and harshest environments for materials, while simultaneously enforcing the strictest requirements for material safety and weight considerations. Evaluation of high-temperature materials environments is a difficult process. Too often researchers extrapolate room-temperature mechanisms to forecast high temperature behavior, but miss the underlying physics (example shown on the right). Our group tests materials in environments realistic to those experienced in service within aerospace applications, which are coupled with detailed characterization to identify the evolution of the microstructure and micromechanical fields in the material.
Our group offers unique capabilities to test materials in extreme environments. Specific research projects on this topic include:
- Thermo-mechanical fatigue of Ni-based superalloys (right)
- Oxidation-fatigue interactions in ceramic matrix composites
- Galvanic corrosion of airframe aluminum alloys (below)
- Materials in propulsion environments (in collaboration with Dr. Pourpoint & Dr. Heister, Purdue)
