MINES METALLURGICAL & MATERIALS ENGINEERING

METALLURGY.MINES.EDU

A NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS & SUPPORTERS SPRING/SUMMER 2018

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COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES METALLURGICAL & MATERIALS ENGINEERING

Twitter.com/MinesMetallurgy

F i n d u s o n s o c i a l m e d i a :

Letter from the Department Head

Faculty Awards

Kester Clarke wins NSF CAREER grant

Material Advantage Chapter best in the world

NSF Graduate Research Fellows

Protonic ceramic fuel cells are durable, flexible

MME Student Awards

COLORADOSCHOOLOFMINES1500 Illinois StreetGolden, CO 80401

303-273-3000 or 800-446-9488

SPRING/SUMMER 2018A Newsletter for Friends & Supporters

of the Colorado School of Mines George S. Ansell Department of Metallurgical &

Materials Engineering

Mailing/Delivery Address:1500 Illinois StreetGolden, CO 80401

MAIN OFFICE:Hill Hall 201

(T) 303.273.3780(F) 303.273.3795

Visit us online:METALLURGY.MINES.EDU

President:Dr. Paul Johnson

Department Head:Dr. Angus Rockett

arockett@mines.edu

Design by:Christina Vessa

cvessa@mines.edu

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President Johnson stopped bythe inaugural Mines MME Blade Show where students from MTGN498B,Bladesmithing, showcased theirsemester project in the Hill Hall lobby

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Welcome from Dr. Angus Rockett

It has been a great spring and summer in the department. Our students and faculty continue to have tremendous success and the materials research facilities are improving with new state of the art instruments, namely due to generous outside donations.

We are very thankful for exceptionally strong alumni donations to the department. Donations are up again, and we could not be more grateful of the opportunities they help provide for our department, including software purchases and repairs in the foundry that enable our faculty to improve both their teaching and assist in their research. Additionally, we are enhancing our advising effort and monetarily rewarding our top students for their hard work, in hopes of encouraging all students to do their best and feel that there is an immediate benefit to high performance. For those who have contributed to these advances, we thank you.

The installation of a near-atmospheric pressure x-ray photoelectron spectrometer and an IonTOF 5 secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) are allowing major advances in research. The photoelectron spectrometer allows us to do high-quality chemical bonding measurements and to study reactions with gases as they happen. The SIMS instrument permits measurement of impurities in materials present only at very low concentrations (parts per million) and has excellent lateral resolution (100 nm). This will allow us to study segregation of materials to grain boundaries in most materials. Because we are allowing outside entities to

F r o m t h e D e p a r t m e n t H e a d

access our equipment, these two advanced characterization processes will permit new areas of research and discovery for those within and outside of our institution.

The department is also beginning a multi-year transition from the current B.S. degree program of study to a revised version of the curriculum. The study of materials will begin in the summer following the first year with several courses in the second year rather than a single course in the second year. It improves flexibility so students can make better use of advanced placement and better adapt to being off schedule, enabling them to participate in co-op and study abroad options. The cost to the department is primarily in scheduling, as some courses move from the later to earlier years causing the combination of sections into larger sections as well as some courses being taught to varied audiences. All of this is beginning now with the new freshmen admitted to the new curriculum this year. We are excited for this structure to kick off in summer of 2019.

Dr. Angus Rockettarockett@mines.edu

Dear friends of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering,

President:Dr. Paul Johnson

Department Head:Dr. Angus Rockett

arockett@mines.edu

Design by:Christina Vessa

cvessa@mines.edu

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Amy J. Clarke, associate professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at Colorado School of Mines, has received a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research to study certain alloys for their ability to withstand explosive blasts.

The project, “In-Situ Studies of Strain Rate Effects on Phase Transformations and Microstructural Evolution in Titanium and Multi-Principal Element Alloys,” will receive $510,000 over three years. Clarke’s team will investigate metastable -titanium and multi-principal

Amy Clarke receives Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research

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element alloys that exhibit transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) and/or twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) for blast resistance.

The team will conduct state-of-the-art multiscale characterization of microstructural evolution during and after quasi-static and dynamic loading to fundamentally understand TRIP/TWIP. “This new knowledge will drive the design of lightweight metallic alloys with tailored deformation mechanisms for blast resistance and performance in extreme environments,” Clarke said.

The Young Investigator Program, introduced in 1985, seeks to identify and support academic scientists and engineers in their first or second full-time tenure-track academic appointment who show exceptional promise for doing creative research. Clarke was one of 32 investigators to receive the award this year, chosen from more than 340 highly qualified applicants.

At Mines, Clarke is the site director of the Center for Advanced Non-Ferrous Structural Alloys and affiliated with the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center. She holds masters and doctoral degrees in metallurgical and materials engineering from Mines and worked as a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining the Mines faculty in 2016.

Mines team reclaims Materials Bowl crown

(From left)

Joe Jankowski, Melissa Thrun, John Copley, Chloe Johnson

A team of Colorado School of Mines students dominated the Materials Bowl at the annual meeting of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society.

The team is comprised of undergraduates Melissa Thrun and John Copley and graduate students Joe Jankowski and Chloe Johnson, all in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. Karen Chen served as an alternate and prepared alongside the team.

Mines has now won six of the 12 Materials Bowls, a materials-themed knowledge and trivia competition. “The students studied hard to represent Mines and did an outstanding job,” said faculty advisor Gerald Bourne, MME teaching professor and assistant department head. “Each year we have had a strong showing.”

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Kester Clarke wins NSF CAREER grant for advanced steel researchKester Clarke, assistant professor of metallurgical and materials engineering, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for work to improve the fundamental understanding of advanced high-strength steel, research that could ultimately help make automobiles safer and more fuel efficient. The project, “Controlling Austenite Stability and Response during Deformation of Advanced High Strength Steels,” will receive $500,000 over five years.

Over the last 15-20 years, sheet steels used in automotive bodies have achieved strengths that are five times those of previous alloys, advances driven in large part by increasing fuel economy and safety standards, Clarke said. Typically, increasing strength results in a compromise in ductility – the steel’s ability to stretch or bend without fracture – but metallurgists have been able to minimize the severity of the trade-off in these new advanced high-strength steels (AHSS) by designing the steels’ microscopic structure to resist fracture.

“We’ve come a long way already – we’ve been able to make steels at really high strengths – but we’ve done a lot of that pretty blind. If we understand all of this a little more, we’ll be able to further create steel microstructures that have even more exceptional properties,” Clarke said. “The hope would be to then be able to apply that to automotive uses. But once you understand this fundamental stability, it can be applied to industries outside of automotive that use steels and even industries that use other materials.”

Clarke’s team will focus on uncovering the relationships between the processing of these steels, the microscopic structure, and their properties and performance. Among the variables they will examine are the way the steel is deformed, how fast that deformation occurs, the pressure under which the steel is deformed and the temperature at which it is manufactured.

Researchers will conduct some of the experiments on equipment at Mines, while other work will be done at partner facilities nationwide. Collaborators include Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, industry partner Quantus Technologies and national user facility Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source.

As part of the project, Clarke and the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center will conduct outreach with local middle and high schools to encourage more diversity in STEM. He also hopes to work with the Mines Material Advantage Chapter on similar efforts.

A Mines alumnus, Clarke joined the faculty in 2016. He holds both masters and doctoral degrees in metallurgical and materials engineering from Mines, a BS in materials science and engineering from Wayne State University and a BA in psychology from Indiana University.

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Students shine at inaugural undergraduate research symposium

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This spring marked the first Undergraduate Research Symposium. Held in the new CoorsTek Building lobby, 82 posters were on display, each highlighting research projects from undergraduates from nearly all the departments at Mines. MME had 4 undergraduate students participate: Anyka Bergeson-Keller, Olivia DeNonno, Zach Schlittenhart, and Joseph Van Sant, whose work is highlighted here.

Van Sant (left), presented his research done with Drs. Ivar Reimanis and Dave Diercks on the mechanical strength of glass fiber with Focused Ion Beam milled flaws in the glass surface. These flaws imitate natural, intrinsic strength-limited flaws in production glass and allow for local chemical and mechanical changes from exposure to humidity to be quantified and studied. We are looking to understand how flaws evolve over time when exposed to these conditions and the subsequent impact on the strength of glass at a fundamental level.

(From left) Bourne, DeMoor, Brennecka

Brennecka, DeMoor, Bourne honored for research, teaching, mentorshipColorado School of Mines faculty were recognized for their research, teaching and mentorship at its annual awards celebration, held April 25 in the Student Center Ballrooms.

Geoff Brennecka, associate professor of metallurgical and materials engineering, received the Dean’s Excellence Award, which recognizes a tenured or tenure-track faculty member for significant and meritorious achievement in teaching and scholarship. Brennecka, who joined Mines in 2014, takes on an above-average teaching load and has earned exemplary teaching evaluations, said Interim Provost Tom Boyd. “He has an affable, accommodating and inviting management style that allows students to flourish and feel comfortable asking for educational and career assistance,” Boyd said.

Brennecka has published more than 40 journal articles, established a research program with more than $2 million in external sponsorship and instituted a glass-blowing lab for students.

Brennecka, as well as Emmanuel De Moor, received tenure and promotion to associate professor. Gerald Bourne received the Outstanding Teaching Award from the class of 2018 graduating seniors.

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Three materials science students named NSF Graduate Research FellowsThree Mines students in materials science received the 2018 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF), which provides three years of support for the graduate education of individuals who have demonstrated potential for significant achievements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines.

The program, started in 1952 shortly after Congress established NSF, is the oldest continuous graduate fellowship of its kind. The following Mines students received awards based on their research proposals:

Michael Knight Materials Science PhD student

Research proposal: “Manipulating B-site Cation Surface Segregation in Perovskite Oxides”

Advisor: Ivar Reimanis, Herman F. Coors Distinguished Professor of Ceramics Engineering

Allison Lim Materials Science PhD student

Research proposal: “Understanding and Designing Plastic Scintillators for Detection of Gamma Rays and Neutrons”

Advisor: Alan Sellinger, Associate Professor of Chemistry

Rachel Sherbondy Materials Science PhD student and CoorsTek Fellow

Research proposal: “Multicaloric Perovskite Materials for Solid-State Refrigeration”

Advisor: Geoff Brennecka, Associate Professor of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering

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Speer awarded multiple AIST honorsfor work in steelA Colorado School of Mines professor was recently honored for his contributions to industry at the Association for Iron and Steel Technology’s annual conference and exposition, held May 7-10 in Philadelphia.

John Speer, John Henry Moore Distinguished Professor of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, was presented the Benjamin F. Fairless Award, which recognizes distinguished achievement in iron and steel production and ferrous metallurgy. The award was established in 1954 in honor of the chairman of the board of U.S. Steel.

Speer also delivered the J. Keith Brimacombe Memorial Lecture, titled “The Continuing Development of Modern Steel Products.” The award was established in 1999 to honor the president and chief of the Canada Foundation for Innovation and longtime faculty member at the University of British Columbia.

Speer said profitability has been a challenge for the steel industry and competition is always fierce among companies both domestic and overseas, but there continue to be many exciting developments. One example is the development of higher-strength steels that reduce the weight of cars, improving fuel efficiency.

“I hope that my Brimacombe Lecture is able to show how steel developments have continued to occur over the past century,” Speer said in an interview with AIST. “If anything, progress is accelerating, and in some ways I think the past few years have been among the most exciting ever in steel product development.”

“I hope that my Brimacombe Lecture is able to show how steel developments have continued to occur over the past century,” Speer said in an interview with AIST. “If anything, progress is accelerating, and in some ways I think the past few years have been among the most exciting ever in steel product development.”

“It is a great honor and quite a surprise to receive two association awards, with so many deserving candidates,” Speer said. “I have certainly been blessed to work in steel development now for 35 years, and to be able to be associated with some interesting developments that hopefully have an impact on steel technology in the present and future. Receiving recognition that your peers appreciate some of these efforts is a fantastic pleasure.”

Speer grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, home of Bethlehem Steel Corporation, which at one time was the second-largest steel producer in the United States. His father and maternal grandfather made steel for the company, and he earned his bachelor’s degree in metallurgy and materials engineering from Lehigh University, just down the street.

After earning his PhD from the University of Oxford, he worked at Bethlehem Steel for 14 years before joining Mines in 1997. He also leads the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center.

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Stephen Liu, professor of metallurgical and materials engineering and director of the Center for Welding, Joining and Coatings Research at Colorado School of Mines, has been named a fellow of two international organizations in recognition of his contributions to the materials and welding fields.

The London-based Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) awarded Liu the title of fellow in February. The IOM3 fellowship, or FIMMM, is given to those who have made a significant contribution

Colorado School of Mines researchers affiliated with the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center (ASPPRC) were honored at the ASM Heat Treating Society’s Thermal Processing in Motion Conference.

Robert Cryderman, research associate professor, received the Fluxtrol Inc. Academic Research Award for excellence in research in the field of thermal processing. Cryderman’s main research interest is in using alloy design and advanced thermomechanical processing techniques to achieve microstructures in medium-carbon to high-carbon steels that improve their performance under fatigue and impact loads. As part of the award, Cryderman and Fluxtrol identified a Mines

Liu receives fellowships from two international organizations

Steel scientists recognized for thermalprocessing research

or have a record of achievement in the materials, minerals and mining disciplines.

The Paris-based International Institute of Welding (IIW) will also recognize Liu as a fellow at its annual assembly in July. The Fellow of IIW (FIIW) award honors members for distinguished contributions to the field of welding science and technology, and for promoting and sustaining the professional stature of the field.

Liu is now the holder of five fellowships, including Fellow of the American Welding Society (1996), Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2000) and Fellow of ASM International (2001).

Liu, who earned his PhD in metallurgical engineering from Mines, has taught at the university since 1987. He has held the American Bureau of Shipping Endowed Chair at Mines since 2015.

student to receive a $2,000 scholarship award.

They chose PhD student Virginia Judge to receive the Fluxtrol Inc. Student Award and $2,000 for research deemed to be of extraordinary quality and impact to the field of thermal processing. With Professor John Speer and Associate Professor Amy Clarke, Judge presented “Mechanical Properties of 4340 Steel Subjected to Short-Time Tempering within the Tempered Martensite Embrittlement Regime” at the conference. Judge earned a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical and materials engineering from Mines in 2014. She conducts research on plate and hot rolled steel with the ASPPRC.

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Protonic ceramic fuel cells are durable, fuel flexible

Protonic ceramic fuel cells could one day be used to power off-the-grid cabins in remote locations, backup generators during natural disasters and more.

In the first long-term study of its kind, MME researchers have shown that the relatively new class of fuel cells exhibit both the long-term durability and fuel flexibility needed to become a viable commercial alternative to other existing fuel cell technologies.

In all, researchers tested 11 different fuels – hydrogen, methane, domestic natural gas (with and without hydrogen sulfide), propane, n-butane, i-butane, iso-octane, methanol, ethanol and ammonia – demonstrating excellent performance and exceptional durability across all fuel types over thousands of hours of operation. Their findings, “Highly durable, coking and sulfur tolerant, fuel-flexible protonic ceramic fuel cells,” were published today by the journal Nature.

“Protonic ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs) are very fuel flexible. We can feed them all sorts of different real-world fuels and make electricity,” said Ryan O’Hayre (lower right), professor of metallurgical and materials engineering and co-lead author of the paper with Mines PhD candidate Chuancheng Duan (top right). “That’s very different from other fuel cells that only work on hydrogen. Some high-temperature solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) will also run on other fuels but they’re very finicky – if you feed them fuels other than hydrogen, they are susceptible to contamination and degradation, and their performance drops rapidly with time. Our fuel cells didn’t face those problems with long-term testing.”

Protonic ceramics are a relative newcomer in the fuel cell world, the material having only been discovered in Japan in 1980. It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s, though, that the technology began to gain acceptance, and in just the last eight or so years, researchers have made major inroads in addressing stability issues and how to make the dense membranes necessary to power a device, O’Hayre said.

The performance tests conducted at Mines were 10 times longer in duration than any previous effort, O’Hayre said. For the tests, Duan designed and built a fuel-cell testing system where he could simultaneously test seven cells using different fuels for thousands of hours. The setup required careful monitoring for the better part of two years.

“The longest test was 8,000 hours, which is almost a whole year,” Duan said. “The degradation rate of most of the fuel cells was less than 3 percent per 1,000 hours, which meets the requirements of

commercial products.” Developing a highly durable fuel cell technology that can directly use natural gas and hydrocarbons is critical when it comes to commercialization, Duan said.

Mines researchers are now working with Fuel Cell Energy, a Connecticut-based fuel cell company, to scale up the lab-scale technology and develop a pre-commercial prototype that could deliver the amount of electricity needed to power a RV or remote cabin, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

“Based on our current work and achievements, it is time to collaborate with an industrial partner to make commercial products,” Duan said. “In three years, there will be a 500-watt direct-natural gas PCFC stack developed based on our technology. In less than 10 years, there will be a 1-kilowatt PCFC stack that could serve as a house power supply, the backup power supply for offices or mobile base stations.”

Co-authors of the paper include professors Robert Kee, Robert Braun, Neal P. Sullivan, Huayang Zhu, Canan Karakaya and Sandrine Ricote from the Mechanical Engineering Department at Mines; Mines postdoctoral fellow Yachao Chen; Ethan J. Crumlin of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Angelique Jarry of the University of Maryland; and David Hook of CoorsTek.

“This is an excellent example of the fruitful collaborations between Mines and CoorsTek catalyzed in part by their lead support for the new CoorsTek Center for Applied Science and Engineering on campus,” O’Hayre said. “David Hook at CoorsTek spearheaded high-temperature XRD studies that helped us better understand the high-temperature behavior of our protonic ceramic membrane.”

Funding for the research came from ARPA-E, through its Reliable Electricity Based on Electrochemical Systems (REBELS) program.

Dr. Ryan O’Hayre Dr. Chuancheng Duan

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Protonic ceramic fuel cells are durable, fuel flexible

Diptak Bhattacharya, a doctoral student in the Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department, was named the winner of the 2018 Materials Literature Review Prize by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) on June 21. His scientific review paper was titled, “Liquid metal embrittlement during resistance spot welding of Zn-coated high strength steels.”

Bhattacharya is a part of the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center (ASPPRC) at Mines, where he is working to simulate the thermo-mechanical conditions that produce zinc-assisted liquid metal embrittlement to better understand the subject. This embrittlement leads to surface cracking of the spot welds of the advanced steels and has delayed the implementation of advanced steels in areas such as automotive architecture.

George Burton has been awarded the Goldstein Scholar Award by the Microanalysis Society. Generously sponsored by the Meteoritical Society and Springer, this award is intended to promote career advancement for

early career members of the Microanalysis Society, increase interactionsof junior and established microanalysts, and advance the state-of-the art in microanalysis measurements. He was recognized in the award ceremony

session at the Microscopy & Microanalysis 2018 meeting in August.

Blake Whitley has been awarded the 2018 HTS/Bodycote Best Paper in Heat Treating award. His paper was titled “Understanding Microstructural Evolution during Rapid Heat Treatment of Microalloyed Steels through Computational Modeling, Advanced Physical Simulation and Multiscale Characterization Techniques.” This award, established in 1997 by the ASM Heat Treating Society, recognizes a paper that represents advancement in heat treating technology, or promotes heat treating in some substantial way or represents a clear advancement in managing the business of heat treating. He will be featured in an upcoming issue of HTPro.

Recent MME student awards

Diptak Bhattacharya

Blake Whitley

George Burton

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ENGINEERING