FDSM lifetime achievement award presented to Rick Gangloff

At the 2014 International Conference on Fatigue Damage of Structural Materials, Professor Rick Gangloff received the lifetime achievement award. The awarding committee honored him offering that the award was given in recognition of:

    His brilliant career and pioneering contributions to the field of environmental cracking in high performance metallic alloys.  His quantitative characterization and mechanistic interpretation of the interactions between electrochemistry, metallurgy, and mechanics has enhanced prognosis methods and informed alloy development for aerospace, transportation, infrastructure, and energy applications.  The FDSM conference series is thankful for his technical inputs, continuous participation, and collegiality.

The biennial conference was held in Cape Cod from the 21-26 September 2014 and brought  together an international assembly of delegates to discuss methods and research trends for  characterizing, predicting and conducting analysis of fatigue damage of structural materials.

Zach Harris Awarded Inaugural Alcoa Graduate Fellowship

The 2014 recipient of the Alcoa Graduate Student Fellowship was Zach Harris. The three year award offers full tuition and a living stipend. As part of a growing partnership between Alcoa, Inc. and U.Va's Department of Material Science, the award will focus on supporting advances in metallurgical research.

Zach Harris recently joined the department as a PhD candidate under Professor Jimmy Burns. He will chiefly be investigating Monel K-500. This nickel-base alloy is frequently used for submarine fasteners, pump shafts, and oil well drill collars due to its exceptional corrosion resistance in marine environments, high strength, toughness and ductility. However, Monel K-500 is prone to hydrogen-assisted intergranular cracking.  The strength of Monel K-500 is predominately influenced by γ’ precipitates; the characteristics of these strengthening precipitates are manipulated via heat treatment of the material. This influence of different heat treatments on the hydrogen-assisted cracking behavior will be the foundation for his research.  Specifically, the hydrogen-assisted crack growth kinetics will be quantified with advanced monitoring techniques developed here at UVa.  These data will then be correlated with high fidelity characterization (e.g. EBSD, SEM, TEM) of the crack wake damage structure to understand how changing the character of the γ’ precipitates influences the hydrogen-assisted cracking behavior.

According to Zach, he and his wife are enjoying settling into the Charlottesville area and have found the adjustment from the west to east coast an easy one.

New Materials Exhibit at UVA Fine Arts Library

The Materials Collection, is a hands-on design resource offered by the  Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library.  The collection includes materials intended to inspire students’ building and design projects.

Welcome New Ph.D. Student Andrew Neils

Welcome our new Ph.D. student, Andrew Neils.  Andrew comes from Boston where he worked at Massachusetts General Hospital for several years trying to enhance the material properties of ultra high molecular weight polyethylene used in artificial knee and hip replacements.  Hobbies include rowing, playing the drums and watching college basketball.