NSF Award
2016529
The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is a new market in the mechanical testing industry sector. The proposed mechanical testing system is a sophisticated, experimental capability that allows the strength of materials to be tested. The testing system will facilitate the design and development of next generation advanced metallic alloys. By enabling advanced research and development in the fields of material science, engineering, and manufacturing, the microstructures of materials may be better understood and controlled. The project will train a graduate student in entrepreneurial leadership at the partners’ sites.<br/><br/>The proposed project will fill a critical gap in the field of mechanical testing and characterization technology. The proposed mechanical testing system, essentially a suite of software tools along with supporting hardware, characterizes the local, heterogeneous deformation on a microstructural length scale under a uniform tensile loading to determine the influence of various microstructural features on the mechanical properties. The system, based on an inverted microscope, primarily consists of a smart imaging subsystem, a feature detection and tracking subsystem, and a material modeling subsystem. The smart imaging subsystem will maintain the focus and field of view during the tensile testing performed with a microtensile testing device. The feature detection and tracking subsystem will capture the deformation of microstructural features. The material modeling subsystem will characterize the deformation and derive relationships between material properties and the characteristics of the deformation. In the proposed project, the technical feasibility of these subsystems will be demonstrated leading to the building of a preliminary prototype.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
