Computational design - development of advanced low-cost multi-element lightweight alloys

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The global oil price slide has heavily impacted the economy of Alberta, which highly relies on its oil sand industry. Alberta needs to diversify and develop multiple industrial sectors for sustainable economy in the long run. The ultimate goal of this project is to establish an Alberta-based Lightweight Materials Research Center, which would help develop local lightweight material manufacturing capability for the Canadian transportation industry and attract future investment nation-wide or globally for developing Alberta's own transportation vehicles' business. Commercial Al and Mg based lightweight alloys have been widely used for fuel saving and reduced harmful emission. However, the alloys are not sufficiently strong, still having performance and safety concerns. In this project, we will develop multi-element lightweight alloys with superior properties over the conventional alloys. This is achievable based on recent studies on high-entropy alloys - an innovative concept proposed initially in 2004. Encouraging lightweight high-entropy alloys (LWHEA) have been produced. However, the current LWHEAs, while possessing higher hardness, have not yet demonstrated sufficient ductility. Besides, their higher cost is another issue. This project is proposed to develop low-cost multi-element Mg-Al-Xi (i=1, 2, 3, ...) lightweight alloys. Multi-elements (Xi) will be used with low quantity. We will use well-established computational techniques, mainly the first-principle method, to design alloys with experimental verification. High-performance prototype alloys will be fabricated and provided to potential users in the automotive industry to evaluate. With the assistance from the potential users in the automotive business, building partnerships and exploring future commercialization paths are highly foreseeable. We believe that the success of this project would help trigger initiation of paving the path to a new industrial sector in Alberta, helping strengthen Alberta economy with higher sustainability and consequently benefiting Albertans in various aspects.