Colloquium: Surya Kalidindi, New Research Tools for Design and Processing of High Performance Materials

Abstract

High performance materials are critical to advances in a broad range of emerging technologies. This presentation summarizes some of our ongoing research projects aimed at design and processing of advanced material systems targeted for enhanced performance in selected applications. The presentation will focus on three main topics: (i) study of deformation and recrystallization processes in polycrystalline metals using a combination of crystal plasticity theories, orientation image mapping, and nano-indentation techniques; (ii) development of a new computationally efficient scale-bridging framework to facilitate practical multi-scale modeling of materials phenomena with bi-directional exchange of information between the constituent length scales; and (iii) development of inverse solution methodologies for materials and process design using informatics based approaches. Our recent results in these areas will be discussed through selected case studies.

Bio

Surya R. Kalidindi earned a B.Tech. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After his graduation from MIT in 1992, Surya joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University as an Assistant Professor. In 2000, he was promoted to the position of Department Head. Under his leadership, the department experienced tremendous growth and was ranked 10th nationally among Materials Science and Engineering programs.  From 2009-2011, Surya served as the Department Head of Mechanical Engineering at Drexel University.

Surya’s research efforts over the past two decades have made seminal contributions to the fields of crystal plasticity and microstructure design. His work has already produced over 150 articles in refereed journals, four book chapters, and a new book on Microstructure Sensitive Design. His work is well cited by peer researchers as reflected by an h-index of 33 and a current citation rate of over 500 citations/year (courtesy, Web of Science).