VICKSBURG, Miss.—ERDC Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) and Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory (GSL) researchers were recently invited to participate in the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Multi-Scale Material Modeling Workshop.
ERDC researchers Dr. Bob Welch, ITL, and Dr. Charles Weiss, GSL, joined a select group of scientists and professors to guide development of computational tools to improve future pavements.
Welch gave an invited talk via remote communication from Vicksburg, Miss., to the workshop. His talk addressed the progress made under ERDC’s Advanced Materials Initiative in developing multi-scale, multi-physics simulation methods to guide the design and synthesis of advanced materials, specifically carbon nanotube-based fibers and silicon carbide structural ceramics. The computational methods allow predictions of a material’s mechanical properties based on atomic/crystalline structure even before the material is built.
The methodology has been used by ERDC to develop a molecular design for a scalable carbon nanotube fiber with a calculated tensile strength of 8.6-million psi, or about 86 times high-strength steel, as described in ITL’s Dr. Charles Cornwell’s 2011 and 2012 journal articles.
Two of the codes allow engineering of the sintering of advanced ceramics and are described in two 2013 journal articles whose lead author is ITL’s Dr. Jeff Allen.
Additionally, one of the methodologies addresses atomistic-level phenomena for both ceramic sintering and ceramic response and is described in a 2012 journal article whose lead author is ITL’s Dr. Bryce Devine.
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