Professor Funded to Study Alloy Microstructures

MELBOURNE, Fla. — Ke-Gang Wang, professor of physics and space sciences and principal investigator, will undertake a project with the support of the National
Science Foundation (NSF) to study the three-dimensional (3D) microstructural evolution of alloys.
The NSF Materials World Network Program is funding the project with $265,000 over three years to Wang and the same amount to the principal investigator at
Pennsylvania State University. Two additional universities in Germany are each receiving the same funding from the German National Science Foundation,
bringing the project’s financial support to $1.06 million.
Florida Tech is the leading institution in the international collaborative research. Students and junior researchers participating in this project will
travel to counterpart institutions across the Atlantic for one month every summer.
“We will use scientific instruments to capture images of the 3D microstructures of alloys and use computer simulation to create digital microstructures of
materials,” said Wang. A goal of the project is to see, by theoretical, computational and experimental means, how the microstructures form and evolve in
materials.
It’s hoped the work will advance the state of the art of simulation and experimental tools for 3D microstructural evolution. In addition, the results may
help engineers to make improvements in armor protection, and the theoretical and computational tools will save money and time for alloy modification.