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Project 3.1.3: Mechanical Property Amplification in Natural
Materials
Project 3.1.3 is lead by Ortiz and involves investigating
natural occurring nanostructured materials to establish
design laws to guide the fabrication of man-made nanocomposites
that will exhibit high strength and toughness. This project
is motivated from the perspective of mechanical property
amplification of structural materials. The elucidation
of mechanical design principles and energy absorption mechanisms
which go beyond a simple composite rule of mixtures is
of interest for many nonballistic/nonblast materials applications.
The team will investigate the exact types of threats a
range of hard nanostructured biocomposites experience in
their environment; i.e. load magnitudes, rates, type, penetration
vs. blunt impact, etc. Ortiz will supervise the structural
and mechanical study of the chosen systems using state-of-the-art
nanoscale mechanical testing instruments and microscopy.
In particular there will be a sustained effort to develop
methodologies that are able to quantitatively assess the
mechanical properties of small volume samples and measure
local property gradients/heterogeneity, which are extremely
important to the development of improved nanoscale materials
systems for Army applications. The project also involves
Boyce and Radovitsky for theoretical modeling, in the field
of finite element analysis (FEA) as well as multilayered
structures. In addition, a collaboration with several Army
research labs will aim to bridge the modeling of the studied
systems from atomistic scale to macroscale, so as to enable
prediction of larger scale mechanical behaviors from nanoscale
properties.
Project 3.1.3 Researchers
Prof. Mary C. Boyce, Department
of Mechanical Engineering
Prof. Christine Ortiz, Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Prof. Raul Radovitzky, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
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