Speaker: Prof. Srikanth Patala, NCSU

Understanding Grain Boundaries through Crystallography Geometry and Statistics

PROF. SRIKANTH PATALA

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

North Carolina State University

Raleigh, NC 27695-7907

Friday, October 4 – 11:00am – EB1 1011

ABSTRACT:

Grain boundaries are planar defects that are ubiquitous in engineering materials. In polycrystalline systems, a wide range of phenomena including diffusion, conductivity, failure resistance (corrosion, intergranular cracking, creep, embrittlement, radiation resistance) and thermal stability, depend on the properties of the internal interfaces. While the engineering of grain boundary properties opens up new and exciting possibilities in structural and functional materials, our understanding of the structure-property relationships of grain boundaries is still very limited. The interfacial properties vary widely depending on the rotations of crystals and the orientations of lattice planes – i.e. the parameters that define the five-dimensional crystallography of grain boundaries. In this talk, I will present recent advances in simplifying these crystallographic aspects that facilitate the analysis of crystallography-property relationships of grain boundaries. Additionally, I will also introduce novel geometrical and statistical tools to provide a holistic approach for analyzing the crystallography-structure-property relationships of interfaces in polycrystalline alloys.

BIO:

Srikanth Patala is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University. His research is focused on developing analytical and computational tools for designing high-performance structural alloys with a special emphasis on investigating and manipulating the properties of interfaces. To this end, Dr. Patala uses a suite of tools, which include thermodynamic theory, crystallography, atomistic simulations, continuum methods, and machine learning. He is the recipient of the 2016 NSF CAREER Award, the 2017 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program Award and the 2019 TMS Young Leaders Professional Development Award. Dr. Patala received his undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2005 and his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011.

We hope to see you there!