Michael Falk
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Materials Science
The strength and toughness of a metal depend on how its atoms are arranged, and on the defects within that arrangement. Two projects examine how extreme processing conditions, such as rapid heating and cooling or heavy deformation, change metal structure at the atomic scale.
- Fields
Materials Science
Engineering
Physics
- Topics
metallic glasses
amorphous metals
additive manufacturing
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Use machine learning to derive structural order parameters of amorphous metals from electron nanodiffraction and atomistic simulation data, linking measurements made at different scales.
- Build simulation-informed continuum models with built-in uncertainty quantification that predict how laser-deposition 3D printing sets strength and toughness, validated by mechanical testing.
- Determine how excess vacancies from quenching and deformation cluster with solute atoms, form voids and promote intermetallic precipitation, using positron annihilation spectroscopy, atom probe tomography and electron microscopy.
- Estimate void formation rates and free-energy pathways in light alloys across temperatures and solute chemistries with transition interface sampling, molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations.
More about the research
Both combine computer simulation with experiments, using each to guide and check the other, so that processing routes for stronger and lighter metals can be designed rather than found by trial and error.
Why it matters
Predictive models for printing metallic glasses could allow larger 3D-printed parts with superior strength and toughness, beyond today's small specialty parts. Understanding how excess vacancies drive strengthening in light alloys could speed development of strong, lightweight metals for vehicles, protective equipment and space exploration.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jinwoo Hwang
Ohio State University, OH·Materials Science
Use 4D scanning transmission electron microscopy (4D-STEM) on metallic glasses with slight compositional differences to identify dominant medium-range order structures (local atom-packing patterns), their relaxation times and evolution pathways.
Marcelo Kuroda
Auburn University, AL·Materials Science
Engage ten undergraduates per summer in ten-week computational projects that model materials and molecules across length and time scales, from electronic-structure theory to continuum modeling.
Yiliang Liao
Iowa State University, IA·Engineering
Determine how the evolving, uneven thermal environment of a hot liquid support bath controls polymer diffusion and interlayer fusion in embedded printing, using deep-neural-network molecular dynamics, phase-field modeling, and experiments.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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