The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded a $100,000 grant to a University of Central Florida (UCF) (Orlando, Florida, USA) professor for a project that pinpoints the initial stages of stress-corrosion cracking.
The grant’s recipient is Ranajay Ghosh, an assistant professor in UCF’s aerospace engineering department. Along with his co-principal investigator and colleague Seetha Raghavan, Ghosh is developing computer models that can detect cracks in metal components caused by stress and corrosion.
“These cracks often initiate at sub-micron or even nanometer length scales and thus can stay undetected for quite some time,” Ghosh says. “By the time the cracks are visible, damage is already well underway.”
While stress-corrosion cracking is observed in lightweight aerospace materials such as aluminum, researchers don’t know how it starts. Ghosh hopes to solve this mystery by developing computer models that, in turn, could lead to physical models and early detection warning systems that can isolate damaged areas. In addition, Ghosh’s work could result in stress-corrosion cracking resistant materials and coatings.
In creating his models, Ghosh will utilize scientific equations and “these equations will be analyzed in great detail and compared with sophisticated X-ray techniques to improve accuracy. The resulting model will then be used to create a computer simulation of crack initiations under some of the common conditions that are already known to cause stress-corrosion cracking.”
Ghosh will utilize data from synchrotron X-rays that will be captured at Argonne National Laboratory (Lemont, Illinois, USA) using advanced technologies and technologies developed by Raghavan. The X-rays will allow the two investigators to observe real-time microstructural degradation and oxidation caused by stress-corrosion cracking, and that data will be used to inform their computer models.
“We’re using a state-of the art, in situ sample environment design to attack an age-old problem,” says Raghavan, who is a professor and the program director for the aerospace engineering program at UCF.
Source: University of Central Florida, www.ucf.edu.