REU Site: Advanced Metallurgical Design for Transportation, Infrastructure, and Energy – Intellectual Merit

Kip O. Findley, Colorado School of Mines, DMR 1062797

Program Overview:11 students were recruited from schools nationwide to participated in the REU site program at the Colorado School of Mines Metallurgical and Materials Department in the summer of 2011. The student participants contributed to funded research programs through multiple research centers and faculty initiatives at CSM and through collaborative projects at NIST-Boulder with the Materials Reliability Division. A wide range of metallurgical topics were addressed through the following list of REU projects shown below and in the figures to the right:• Self-Propagating High-Temperature Synthesis of

Nanocomposite Material• Thermomechanical Simulation of Hot-Rolled Q&P

Sheet Steels• Characterization and Microstructure Evolution of

Solders for Use in Photovoltaic Applications• Wear of Armor and Abrasion Resistant Plate Steel• Mechanisms of Silicate Island Formation• Finite Element Analysis of the Effective Thermal

Conductivity of U-7Mo Dispersion Fuel Plates as a Function of Interaction Layer Thickness

• Utilization of Acoustic Emission Signals to Detect Damage in Dual Phase Steels

• Anisotropy Characterization in Sheet Steels via Microindentation Hardness Testing

• Yield Strength Determination from Charpy Impact Testing

Sheet bendability test set up and examples of coated dual phase sheet steel specimens exhibiting various degrees of bendability. Results from REU project.

Microstructures and microhardness of a near-β Ti-alloy after aging at 593°C for various times. Results from REU project.

REU Site: Advanced Metallurgical Design for Transportation, Infrastructure, and Energy – Broader Impacts

Kip O. Findley, Colorado School of Mines, DMR 1062797

Students, ranging from incoming college freshman to seniors, participated in the program. In an effort to tie together the multidisciplinary theme of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Energy with the program, the participant majors included materials engineering, mechanical engineering, and civil engineering. The students were exposed to specialized metallurgical research equipment at CSM, including the recently NSF-funded Gleeble 3500 (DMR-0959329), and at NIST-Boulder. The objectives of the program are to stimulate/increase interest in STEM disciplines and promote retention for underclassmen and to help inform the career decisions of upperclassmen considering research careers.

In order to expose the participants to metallurgical techniques and research tools not necessarily available at their home institutions, they took part in hands-on workshops including the workshop on forging shown above, where the students all manufactured their own nails.

CSM joined forces with REU programs at Washington State University (collaborator: D.F. Bahr) to collect data on student self-efficacy before and after the research experience. As shown in the plot above, which is the combined data set from all CSM and WSU programs, the student self-efficacy improved in every category that was assessed.