RESEARCH

Deformation and Corrosion of Materials under Extreme Conditions

An increase in the complexity and severity of service conditions in areas such as aerospace and marine industries, nuclear systems, microelectronics, batteries, and biomedical devices etc., imposes great challenge to the reliable performance of materials under extreme conditions. For example, to develop new pipeline materials to transport oil and gas from unconventional reserves in harsh environment; to build the next generation nuclear power plants with strong and corrosion resistant materials for improved safety and longer lifetime; to develop advanced implantable medical devices with reliable metal interconnect in physiological environment; and to fabricate high capacity fast charging batteries with electrodes that can undergo millions of charging and uncharging cycles in corrosive electrolyte. These extreme environment is testing the limits of most engineering materials and challenging our current understanding of the underlying deformation and corrosion mechanisms. 

A better understanding of the deformation and corrosion mechanisms of materials under these conditions is hence critical to extend the service lifetime, improve reliability, and offer huge economical savings for these applications. Our research mainly focuses on understanding the deformation and/or corrosion of crystalline and non-crystalline materials in the broad context of such extreme conditions. Our research cover a wide range of topics at the intersection of several disciplines including materials science, plasticity and fracture, tribology, corrosion, and electrochemistry. 

Current Research Interests:

• Tribocorrosion (combined wear and corrosion) of lightweight metals, multilayered materials, and multi-principal element alloys. 
• Corrosion and stressed corrosion of implant metals.
• Stress corrosion cracking of metallic thin films on hard or flexible substrate. 
• Atomistic- and meso-scale characterization (EBSD, TEM, APT etc.) of deformed and corroded materials. 
  
• Multiphysics modeling of tribocorrosion, corrosion, and electrodeposition of metallic components with complexly coupled physics (e.g. solid mechanics, electrochemistry, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer). 

Major Equipments:

• Rtec MFT‐5000 Multifunctional Tribometer. 
  • High Temperature Tribology Test:  Linear Oscillating Test (room temp – 1000^oC in air). Testing standard: ASTM D5706, D5707, D6425, D7217, D7420, D7594,D7421,DIN51834 /2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9.
  • Tribocorrosion Test:  (room temperature – 80^oC). Testing standard: ASTM G119.
  • Micro-indentation and micro-scratch test in liquid cell.
  • Three-point-bending test in liquid cell.
• Gamry Reference 600 ™ Potentiostat/Galvanostat Galvanostat/Zero Resistance Ammeter. 
• Virginia Tech High Turbulence Corrosion Loop.
• Q-Fog SSP-600 Cyclic Corrosion Test Chamber.
• Salt Chamber Corrosion System and four VersaStat corrosion testers. 
• MTI SP-25VIM 25KW Vacuum Induction Melting System.
• Glovebox.
• Table-top tensile testing machine, with liquid cell.
• Digital image correlation system for real time strain measurement. 

Additional On-Campus Facilities:

• Experimental facilities: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, the School of Geosciences, the Nanoscale Characterization and Fabrication Laboratory (NCFL), ICTAS and Micro & Nano Fabrication Laboratory of Virginia Tech provide a wide range of research equipment for materials synthesis, characterization, and testing. 
• Computational facilities: MSE department and VT ARC provide a wide range of computational resources and software for materials research (COMSOL multiphysics, Thermo-Calc, Matlab, VASP, OriginLab etc.)