Fundamental Studies on Sintering of Alloys, Composites, and Coatings

烧结是在压力下加热材料粉末，使工程部件成形的过程。烧结工艺广泛应用于汽车、航空航天、国防和机床工业的金属、陶瓷和复合材料部件的制造。然而，在烧结过程中避免与加工相关的材料结构和性能的不良变化通常是非常具有挑战性的。在烧结过程中控制材料的结构对于非晶合金等对温度高度敏感的材料尤为重要。由于其优异的机械和电化学性能，这些材料正在考虑几种应用。该奖项支持与非晶合金及其复合材料和涂层烧结工艺发展相关的基础研究。这项研究的结果将导致工程材料先进制造战略领域的创新，被确定为国家经济发展的关键。这项研究还将促进不同群体的学生参与制造业研究。尽管非晶合金具有吸引人的特性，但其在实际应用中的实际利用受到限制，主要是由于使用常规凝固工艺处理大块形状的困难。火花等离子烧结工艺涉及脉冲直流电和单轴压力的同时应用，提供了制造大块非晶合金而不改变材料结构的有趣可能性。研究小组将进行实验，研究放电等离子烧结大块非晶合金、颗粒增强和层压复合材料以及厚非晶合金涂层致密化的基本机制。该研究将阐明非晶合金中纳米晶尺寸分布的演变机制、复合材料的延展性发展以及非晶复合材料涂层的摩擦学腐蚀行为。主要目标是在这些研究领域建立加工-微观结构-性能的相关性。这项研究的成功完成将极大地推动非晶金属合金火花等离子烧结技术的发展，从而使烧结技术和工程非晶材料在更广泛的应用领域得到更广泛的认可。

Sintering is the process of forming engineering components by heating material powder under pressure. Sintering processes are widely used for the manufacturing of metallic, ceramic, and composite components for automotive, aerospace, defense, and machine tool industries. However, it is often very challenging to sinter the components free from processing-related undesirable changes in structure and properties of materials. Controlling the structure of materials during sintering becomes particularly important for highly temperature-sensitive materials such as amorphous alloys. These materials are being considered for several applications due to their outstanding mechanical and electrochemical properties. This award supports fundamental research related to the development of sintering processes for the amorphous alloys and their composites and coatings. The results of this research will lead to innovations in the strategic area of advanced manufacturing of engineering materials, identified as a key to national economic development. The research will also promote the participation of diverse groups of students in manufacturing research. In spite of their attractive properties, actual utilization of amorphous alloys in practical applications has been limited primarily due to difficulties in processing of bulk shapes using conventional solidification processing. The spark plasma sintering process involving simultaneous application of pulsed direct current and uniaxial pressure offers interesting possibilities of manufacturing bulk amorphous alloys without undesirable changes in material structure. The research team will perform experiments to investigate the fundamental mechanisms of densification for the spark plasma sintering of bulk amorphous alloys, particle reinforced and laminated composites, and thick amorphous alloy coatings. The research will elucidate the mechanisms of evolution of nanocrystalline size distribution in amorphous alloys, ductility development in composites, and tribological corrosion behavior of amorphous composite coatings. The major objective is to establish the processing-microstructure-properties correlations in these areas of research. Successful completion of this research would significantly advance the state-of-the-art in spark plasma sintering of amorphous metallic alloys leading to wider industry acceptance of the sintering technology and engineered amorphous materials in a wide range of applications.