CAREER: Hard and Tough Boron Rich Ceramic Laminates Designed to Contain Thermal Residual Stresses

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NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: This CAREER program describes an integrated research and educational project to develop hard and tough boron carbide and aluminium magnesium boride based laminates with controlled compressive and tensile stresses in separate layers. The research produces fundamental knowledge and understanding of the interrelationships between processing, residual stresses, and mechanical behavior of boron rich multilayered ceramic composites. This project will lead to the development of wear resistant, damage-tolerant ceramics with enhanced mechanical properties far exceeding those of currently available non-oxide ceramics. The proposed project provides an ideal basis for mechanical, Materials and aerospace engineering students to actively participate in project-based learning. Integrated research and educational activities include outreach to a diverse group of middle and high school students and research opportunities and course enhancements for undergraduate students. Graduate students are involved in research, presentations at technical meetings, and mentor undergraduate and high school student researchers. Special efforts are made to attract underrepresented students to careers in materials science and engineering through the high school outreach and undergraduate research components. In addition, students will benefit from global research opportunities through the project's collaboration with a new network of international researchers. Ultimately, societal benefits will come with the development of novel reliable and robust systems and devices.TECHNICAL DETAILS: Laminates with strong interfaces provide high fracture toughness, increased wear resistance and damage tolerance. As a result, these composites exhibit improved reliability and durability. The enhancement of the mechanical performance of laminates is obtained through design of controlled residual stresses in separate layers. The proposed modeling-experimental program is designed to demonstrate unequivocally that the concept of controlled residual stresses can be employed to produce high performance ceramic laminates. Samples of boron rich multilayered ceramics with controlled residual stresses are designed and further manufactured by rolling and hot pressing/hot isostatic pressing. Additionally, tape casting and spark plasma sintering are to be used for the laminate manufacturing. The research results in a clear identification of the microstructural parameters that control residual stresses in laminates. Mechanical properties such as strength, hardness, wear resistance, and fracture toughness are to be measured to confirm the increase in the mechanical performance of the laminates. The PI takes part in a Bridges summer program at her university to attract bright and talented students to engineering. Graduate and undergraduate students have a unique opportunity to be a part of a cutting-edge, international materials development research team and to publish their results.