CAREER: An Integrated Computational and Experimental Framework to Understand Deformation and Failure of Porous Materials

该学院早期职业发展（CAREER）补助金将支持基础研究，以了解多孔材料在外部载荷下如何变形和失效，并开发可用于此类材料精确工程的预测模型。应用广泛，包括地下作业的安全和可持续工程，以提取能源（地热），储存能源（氢）和处理温室气体（二氧化碳）。还有一些包括燃料电池、电池和民用基础设施组件的优化设计，这些都关系到美国的国家利益。用于预测微观结构复杂的多孔材料的变形和失效的现有模型是缓慢的，并且包含源于缺乏对物理学的机械理解的知识缺口。这个项目旨在通过新的数学算法加速计算机模拟，并将模拟锚在受控的实验室实验中，以提高物理理解。综合教育活动包括下一代工程师的培训，研究生课程开发，通过与宾夕法尼亚州立大学科学中心和学校合作的夏季研究计划与宾夕法尼亚州农村的K-12教师进行外联，以及为领域专家提供工具和数据。经典的孔隙力学模型用于模拟物理近似多孔材料作为连续体，因此，不能提供深入的微观故障的根源。直接数值模拟提供了一个有吸引力的替代方案，但计算昂贵。该项目将支持开发一套完整的实验室实验和计算方法，其总体目标是：（1）实现对脆性多孔介质变形和失效的机械理解;（2）通过物理学知情的数学近似加速微尺度模拟。这一共同努力将有助于建立结构-性能关系，有助于设计和筛选新的弹性微结构。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will support fundamental research to understand how porous materials deform and fail under external loading, and to develop predictive models useful for the precise engineering of such materials. Applications are broad and include the safe and sustainable engineering of subsurface operations to extract energy (geothermal), store energy (hydrogen), and dispose of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide). Still others include the optimal design of components for fuel cells, batteries, and civil infrastructure, all of national interest to the US. Existing models used to predict deformation and failure of microstructurally complex porous materials are slow and contain knowledge gaps that stem from a lack of mechanistic understanding of the physics. This project aims to accelerate computer simulations through novel mathematical algorithms and to anchor the simulations to controlled lab experiments for improved physical understanding. The integrated educational activities include the training of next-generation engineers, curriculum development for graduate students, outreach to K-12 teachers of rural Pennsylvania through a summer research program in partnership with the Center for Science and the Schools at Penn State, and tools and data for domain experts.There is a gap in the fundamental understanding of how porous materials deform and fail at microscopic scales. Classical poromechanical models used to simulate the physics approximate porous materials as continua and, therefore, cannot provide insights into the microscopic origins of failure. Direct numerical simulation presents an attractive alternative but is computationally expensive. This project will support the development of an integrated suite of lab experiments and computational methods with the overarching goal of: (1) enabling a mechanistic understanding of deformation and failure of brittle porous media; and (2) accelerating microscale simulations through physics-informed mathematical approximations. The combined effort will contribute towards establishing structure-property relations that are useful for designing and screening new and resilient microstructures. It will also enable computationally demanding tasks such as optimization and uncertainty quantification associated with geometrically complex porous domains.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.