| Abstract Scope |
Structural materials that can withstand extreme environments are crucial, especially for aerospace, hypersonic, nuclear, and sustainable energy applications. Historically, the selection and design of materials for these extreme environment applications have been challenging because of the conflict between their strength and fracture resistance, i.e., their overall damage tolerance. However, additive manufacturing, a bottom-up process similar to how nature builds structures, has improved the designability of structural materials. The microstructure of the materials can be tailored in a range of length scales, i.e., cellular structures (~0.5-6 μm), grain morphology (~10-1000 μm), texture gradient (~10-500 μm), melt-pool structures (~50-3000 μm) and compositional gradients. Such microstructural freedom during additive manufacturing provides an opportunity to introduce hierarchical structures inside the materials to increase their strength without affecting their fracture resistance, i.e., improving their overall damage tolerance. This presentation will highlight the opportunities and challenges of discovering damage-tolerant structural alloys using additive manufacturing. |