Smart Manufacturing of Hybrid Materials with an Exceptional Combination of Strength and Toughness

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Traditional engineering materials frequently compromise strength for toughness, limiting the reliability and safety of many materials. A material that could break this paradigm would find applications in critical high loading environments where failure from either mode is not an option. Such a novel material could be used for medical implants with a smaller form factor, smaller and more precise surgical instrumentation, and even strengthen automotive and aircraft structures.  By combining high strength and high toughness properties, this material would fit into many existing applications and enable new engineering advances to across the medical, aerospace, automotive, and many other industries.  This award will support research to develop high strength, high toughness metallic materials, which mimic structures found in nature. This research has the potential to establish a new area of materials engineering and processing devoted to the discovery of similar hybrid materials and foster interest in related fields among university students and industry engineers.The objective of this research is to investigate smart manufacturing processes that employ shape memory alloys to transcribe the "J-curve" mechanical response and uniform molecular/atomic level deformation of the organic biopolymer in bio-inspired hybrid materials. The research approaches are to: (1) replicate nacre's architecture in engineering composites with shape memory alloy and intermetallic lamellae through eutectic solidification, (2) unveil the deformation mechanisms of individual lamellae by in-situ synchrotron high-energy X-ray diffraction and high resolution transmission electron microscopy mechanical testing, (3) uncover the load transfer mechanisms between shape memory alloy and intermetallic lamellae by mapping local strain fields with digital image correlation, and (4) establish a smart manufacturing strategy for a new class of high-performance, bio-inspired hybrid materials of exceptional mechanical prowess. The anticipated outcome will be the coupling of bio-inspired materials design strategies with smart manufacturing techniques to enable the discovery of material systems with exceptional properties and to enable their rapid insertion into existing manufacturing processes. This transformative research has the potential (1) to generate new paradigms of design, development, and implementation of smart manufacturing processes and (2) to accelerate the development and use of high performance, bio-inspired materials.