The societal desire to increase global connectivity while reducing the consumption of fossil fuels drives the development of efficient transportation and energy conversion technologies. Progress is often limited by the capabilities of existing materials. To design the durable new materials needed for these applications, our research applies thermodynamics and kinetics principles to understand the evolution of metals, ceramics, and composite systems in complex chemical, thermal and mechanical environments.
Using complementary experimental and computational tools to elucidate the underlying science, we develop frameworks to predict the evolution of in-service performance to accelerate the optimization of constituent materials and system architectures. These approaches are being applied to problems in structural and functional materials systems.