Research Initiation Award: Theoretical and Computational Methods for Robust Retrieval of Effective Electromagnetic Properties of Random Composite Materials

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Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing research programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. Howard University’s award supports research that seeks to optimize the engineering of random composite materials that have electromagnetic (EM) capabilities. Such capabilities include EM interference shielding and EM observability enhancing, and/or EM sensing capabilities. This opens a wide range of applications in commercial and defense technologies, such as electrical/electronic devices, communication systems, oil and gas industries, and military and law enforcement. The macroscopic properties of composite materials depend on the geometry, distribution, volume fraction, and property of each constituent. While the numerical extraction techniques for the effective EM properties of periodically distributed composite materials are relatively well established and straightforward to implement, those for the randomly distributed composite materials have not been fully explored. The objective of this proposed research is to develop a rigorous theory and accurate and efficient numerical methods to provide the scale-dependent bounds of the effective EM properties of random composites in both static and dynamic cases. The proposed EM homogenization theory will be incorporated in the construction of an all-frequency stable formulation, which will be solved in Monte-Carlo simulations using finite element and domain decomposition methods. A stochastic simulation method will also be developed to characterize the material randomness and geometrical uncertainty and achieve an improved efficiency in the EM property retrieval. The proposed theories and methods will lead to the development of state-of-the-art homogenization tools for the characterization and analysis of random composite materials. This in turn would enable new design methodologies in random composites based on the theoretical guidance and computational support. The project includes an extensive education and outreach activities, including the involvement of students historically underrepresented in this field of research, and the development of video clips and demonstrations to disseminate the results to the public.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.