Entry Date:
October 19, 2007

Material Solutions for the Energy Problem: A Multi-Scale Modeling Approach to Materials Degradation

Principal Investigator Sidney Yip


The use of advanced computational capabilities to understand and solve complex problems has become critical to scientific leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security. One particular class of extremely complex but highly relevant problems to society is concerned with the fragile balance between the worlds increasing energy needs and the preservation of the environment. The development of new technologies to tackle those complex issues relies on the creation and improvement of novel materials that can withstand extreme environmental conditions while achieving their desired purpose. In this poster we discuss how computational techniques, through their use in multiscale modeling of materials, can provide fundamental understanding of the mechanisms limiting materials performance in aggressive environments and therefore solutions to many of the technological challenges associated with the energy problem. As an example we will discuss how multi-scale modeling techniques can be used to study the environmental degradation of high strength steels and the possibilities opened by such an approach.