CMEDE Research

Collaborative Materials Research Groups (CMRGs)

CMEDE research is organized within four research areas, with one each for the four major classes of materials: metals, ceramics, polymers and composites. Collaborative research within each material system is planned, executed and overseen by a Collaborative Materials Research Group or CMRG. Thus there are four CMRGs: the Ceramics CMRG, the Composites CMRG, the Metals CMRG, and the Polymers CMRG. The role of the CMRG is to coordinate and oversee all research within the Consortium on that material system, to ensure that there is appropriate communication between experimental, modeling and processing efforts, and to identify, coordinate and perhaps link to related activities in affiliated institutions and industries. CMRGs are coordination and planning groups with Consortium-wide awareness of the issues that are being addressed, and so have a management role.

We also conduct Integrated Research, which is not categorized by a specific CMRG, as these tasks include members from various CMRGs.

Collaborative Technical Research Groups (CTRGs)

Research effort within each CMRG is managed through collections of faculty, ARL scientists, postdocs and students who work together (within collaborative units called Collaborative Technical Research Groups or CTRGs). Each Collaborative Materials Research Group operates three Collaborative Technical Research Groups:

• An Experimental CTRG, focused on Advanced Experimental Techniques and Materials Characterization
• A Modeling CTRG, focused on Modeling & Simulations and Bridging the Scales
• A Processing CTRG, focused on Synthesis and Processing

There is thus a Metals Experimental CTRG, a Metals Modeling CTRG and a Metals Processing CTRG under the Metals CMRG. Each Collaborative Technical Research Group coordinates all research activities within the corresponding technical core elements (e.g. advanced experimental techniques) for each material (e.g. boron carbide), and interacts directly with the two other CTRGs working on the same material.

Each CTRG has multiple faculty, staff, postdocs and students, from multiple academic institutions, together with multiple ARL staff members. Each CTRG has an identified faculty lead and an identified ARL liaison, together constituting the leadership of the CTRG.

Membership and Leadership of the CMRGs

The primary members of each CMRG are the faculty leads and corresponding ARL liaisons from the Collaborative Technical Research Groups that feed into the CMRG (and so CMRGs have a minimum of 6 members ex officio). Each CMRG has an identified faculty lead and an identified ARL lead, together constituting the leadership of the CMRG. The members at large of the CMRG are, by extension, all of the members of the three CTRGs that guide the specific research directions for that material.