The Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments Collaborative Research Alliance (MEDE CRA) culminated its 10-year program with a virtual capstone event, co-hosted by the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM ARL) and Johns Hopkins University. More than 180 people participated in the event, including principal investigators and students from consortium universities, Army researchers and industry partners. Representatives from U.S. Army Futures Command, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, Office of Naval Research, National Ground Intelligence Center, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and other DEVCOM subordinate organizations participated as well.

The MEDE CRA is a basic research program led by Johns Hopkins University. The program includes a consortium of 25 university and research partners located in 13 states and three foreign countries. MEDE has developed a materials-by-design strategy, which has resulted in innovative protection materials and computational design codes for armor applications. These new concepts will support the Soldier Lethality and Next Generation Combat Vehicle modernization priorities. According to DEVCOM ARL Dr. Patrick Baker, MEDE successfully achieved its mission by focusing on the three key elements of a basic research program: relevance, team, and science.

Maj. Gen. Edmond “Miles” Brown, DEVCOM commanding general, highlighted the capstone with a keynote address. He described a multinational force that was attacked while on patrol during a deployment to Afghanistan. The body armor they wore provided the necessary protection to survive the attack and make it back home safely. Additionally, Brown described the evolution of body armor from the time he entered the U.S. Army to present day, and the importance of basic research programs like the MEDE CRA.

Sen. Ben Cardin and Sen. Christopher Van Hollen of Maryland expressed their congratulations to the MEDE CRA. Cardin noted that MEDE has graduated 76 PhD students and transitioned 55 postdoctoral fellows. More than 200 undergraduates participated in research activities; 62 of whom were from HBCUs and minority serving institutions. This highlights the program’s real dedication to inclusivity and diversity, he said. Van Hollen added that MEDE will help save American lives and keep troops safer for years to come.

Officials said a hallmark of the MEDE CRA is its impact on workforce development. Including the university faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows, and DEVCOM ARL researchers, over 600 individuals have been involved in the MEDE research. These individuals include high school and undergraduate student apprentices sponsored through DEVCOM’s Army Educational Outreach Program, and the Army Research Office’s partnered research initiative for HBCUs and minority serving institutions. The MEDE CRA ensured these valuable opportunities were incorporated into the core research program.

Prof. Lori Graham-Brady of Johns Hopkins and Dr. Sikhanda Satapathy for DEVCOM ARL presented the numerous accomplishments of the MEDE CRA. According to Dr. Satapathy, the goal of the program was to look at the materials or different material classes at different scales, starting from the atomistic scale to the application scale. To achieve this, the MEDE program developed a rigorous mechanism-driven materials-by-design strategy that resulted in new magnesium alloys, boron carbide, and glass-epoxy composites.

In each material, MEDE was able to achieve a weight reduction and improved performance. These discoveries were translated into computational design codes which assisted in validating the experimental data. Industry partners were able to scale-up the laboratory produced materials for ballistic evaluation at DEVCOM ARL.

Graham-Brady said by improving these armor materials they will have a real impact on keeping people safe, which, she said, motivated much of the research.

The capstone included a MEDE CRA video, which provided an overview and successes of the program.

The impact of MEDE to the broader science community will be felt for years, Graham-Brady said. To date, MEDE university personnel and DEVCOM ARL researchers have authored 478 peer-reviewed journal articles. These articles have been cited over 8,000 times. To ensure the legacy of the MEDE CRA, special edition journals featuring MEDE research have been published.

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels expressed his appreciation to the U.S. Army for sponsoring the MEDE CRA. Johns Hopkins’ partnership with the Department of Defense was seeded in 1940 with the creation of the National Defense Research Committee. MEDE’s innovations will continue to shape the future of the government-university research through the doctoral students and postdocs now working in DOD and national laboratories, academia and global industry.

The Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments Collaborative Research Alliance (MEDE CRA) conducted its tenth and final Fall Meeting on November 17th, 2021. As the lead research organization of the CRA, Johns Hopkins University (JHU) hosts the event. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, this event was held using a virtual format.

The Fall Meeting brings the entire MEDE CRA together for a program overview and technical discussions in preparation for the January 2022 capstone event. This year’s Fall Meeting was attended by 117 individuals including special guests from the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL), DEVCOM Soldier Center, United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Command, and the National Ground Intelligence Center. Professor Lori Graham-Brady (JHU) and Dr. Sikhanda Satapathy (ARL) led the meeting, which highlighted the research accomplishments for new metallic, ceramic, and composite protection materials, as well as new computational design codes and tools for armor applications. Dr. Scott Schoenfeld, ARL’s Senior Research Scientist for Terminal Ballistics provided keynote remarks. The meeting also featured a virtual poster session with 41 presenters from across the MEDE CRA.

The MEDE CRA is an integral part of the ARL’s Enterprise for Multiscale Research of Materials. The objective of the MEDE CRA is to develop the capability to design, optimize, and fabricate material systems exhibiting revolutionary performance in extreme dynamic environments. The approach is to realize a mechanism-based, “materials-by-design” capability that focuses on advancing the fundamental understanding of materials in relevant high-strain-rate and high-stress regimes. Model materials in the areas of metals, ceramics, and composites are being investigated to improve protection for soldiers and vehicles.

Since 2012, the Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments Collaborative Research Alliance (MEDE CRA) is working with the United States Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM ARL) to research extreme environment materials. They aim to create materials that will protect soldiers and equipment from weapons that are appearing, and may appear in the future, in combat.

In a recent article published by SIGNAL, Sikhanda Satapathy, collaborative agreement manager of the MEDE CRA, says that the materials being researched (metals, ceramics, and composites) will need to withstand military conditions, which are more extreme in pressure, stress, and strain rate than the conditions that arise in commercial use. These materials will also need to be minimal in weight to reduce the strain on soldiers, improve mobility, and maximize fuel efficiency.

The metal research is focused on reducing weight, so the ARL is examining magnesium, one of the lightest structural metals available. Because it is lower in strength and has inherent failure mechanisms, research is centered on identifying and ameliorating these failure mechanisms. Another prong of the research is to develop a magnesium alloy strong enough to avoid these failure mechanisms, and the knowledge gained from the creation of the alloy will also apply to research of other metals, such as aluminum and steel.

Ceramics are five times as strong but also five times more brittle than metal. The ceramics research, a collaboration between the ARL and MEDE CRA members Johns Hopkins and Rutgers University, is focused on achieving a high hardness level and high tensile strength for the material. One approach is to use boron carbide as a ceramic material and to strengthen its crystal structure with molecular materials, given its amorphous shear tendency that reduces the material’s crystal integrity. Doping the boron carbide with silicon reduces the shear tendency but also reduces strength; adding titanium diboride eliminates the reduction of strength. They are looking at ways to scale production for larger samples for further testing.

Composite research is conducted by the ARL and MEDE CRA member, the University of Delaware, and is focused on examining a glass-epoxy composite’s tendency for failure. Coating individual fibers chemically can help prevent the fiber from failing. By adding different materials to the composite, they strengthened the composites and are now looking to scale production to create larger samples for further testing.

Learn more about the materials being researched here.

Learn more about DEVCOM ARL here.

CMEDE Researchers
Dr. Jeffrey Lloyd CCDC Army Research Laboratory	Dr. Richard Becker CCDC Army Research Laboratory	Dr. Timothy Walter CCDC Army Research Laboratory	Professor Jamie Kimberley New Mexico Tech
Mr. Andrew Matejunas New Mexico Tech	Professor Justin Wilkerson Texas A&M University	Ms. Angela Olinger Texas A&M University

Strengthening in metals is accomplished either by introducing defects in the material through deformation or by the introduction of alloying elements. Alloying magnesium is essential for increasing its strength so that it can resist deformation during high rate loading events such as penetration. However, clusters of these alloying elements, called precipitates, act as nucleation sites for damage that leads to failure. In order to predict how a high strength magnesium alloy fails we need to be able to account for failure that initiates at these precipitates. In this collaborative work between researchers at ARL and Texas A&M, we develop a model that takes in 3d images of second phase particles in magnesium alloys and simulates how these particles cause the material to fail under dynamic tension. Model predictions are compared with dynamic tension experiments performed at New Mexico Tech to ensure that the predictions give physically meaningful results.

In most metals the alloying elements tend to precipitate preferentially on certain material planes. In magnesium this effect is amplified due to the material’s strong texture. Therefore, not only does the material’s strength differ along different directions, but the clusters of precipitates are also strongly directional. Computer simulations showed that when the directionality of precipitates was not included in the failure predictions, the predicted failure behavior was opposite from what was experimentally observed. Only when the experimentally measured precipitate shapes were included did predictions of the failure behavior match the experiments.

Computer simulations at this scale require a level of detail that is not suitable for engineering-scale simulations of large structures. Therefore, researchers are currently determining how we can extract the essential features of these simulations and map them onto a model that efficiently correlates the underlying precipitate morphology to the macroscale failure behavior.

Learn more about Metals CMRG research here >>

We are pleased to release the CMEDE Highlights for 2018. This issue illustrates the unique aspects of our activities, recaps some of our significant events, and showcases a small sampling of the programs and people within each of our materials research groups (ceramics, composites, and metals). We are excited to share these accomplishments with you, as they have broad and deep impacts on our scientific and technological capabilities and allow us to developing a new workforce educated in the up-and-coming possibilities of materials-by-design. We are positive that the advances we are making in the science and the workforce will have great impact on the protection of our military personnel and vehicles.

We encourage you to take a peek and learn more about CMEDE!

Building Better Vehicle Armor

Beatriz Medeiros — (Image: Will Kirk / Homewood Photography)

The average soldier carries at least 60 pounds of gear, with some specialized fighters carrying loads almost twice that weight. A significant portion of this is body armor. Typically made of a combination of ceramic and polymer materials, body armor worn by infantry members weighs about 30 pounds.

This equipment is critical for the job, shielding vital organs from the potentially lethal shock of bullets and other projectiles. But even though modern body armor works pretty well for what it’s intended to do, explains Beatriz Medeiros, a third-year materials science and engineering student at the Whiting School, it can be cumbersome.

To lighten soldiers’ loads and to improve their protection within military vehicles, Medeiros is working in the lab of Timothy Weihs, a professor in her department, to develop new types of vehicle armor materials. She recently received the prestigious Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program internship, which is co-sponsored by the Army Research Office and the Center for Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments (CMEDE). CMEDE is the Army’s largest, basic research program focused on improving protection materials for military applications and is located within the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute. Together, these sources provided the financial support that made it possible for her to continue her research at Johns Hopkins over the summer.

Medeiros is working to produces an alloy which, after proper thermomechanical processing, can form nano-precipitates that can slow down or block dislocations, the atomic-scale defects in materials that are produced and then propagate upon impact.

“A soldier’s job is hard enough,” Medeiros says. “By improving their armor, we’re hoping to make their jobs a little bit easier.”To further strengthen these alloys, Medeiros, under the mentorship of graduate student Suhas Eswarappa Prameela, is exploring different thermomechanical processing methods. These include rolling, which presses the material between two rollers, and equal channel angular extrusion, which pulls it through an L-shaped chamber. Both methods can change the material’s average crystal grain size and precipitate size, which in turn affects its strength.

Click here to view all articles in JHU Engineering magazine.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently published a workshop report which included the scientific and materials-by-design approaches of the MEDE program. Hosted by the National Materials and Manufacturing Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in December 2014, the public workshop discussed future advances in weight reduction by materials substitution for vehicles, including such topics as armor, structure, automotive parts, and armaments. Participants included members of military research laboratories and researchers from industry and academia.

CMEDE Director, Prof. KT Ramesh provided a presentation titled, “The Science of Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments” which highlighted the key research activities of modeling and simulation, bridging the scales, advanced experimental techniques, multiscale material metrics and characterization, and processing and synthesis. The MEDE objective, Ramesh noted, is to establish the capability to design materials for use in specific dynamic environments. This includes developing fundamental understanding in multiscale materials and ultra-high loading rate environments, executing a basic research program, and enhancing and fostering cross-disciplinary and cross-organizational collaboration. These activities are enabled through the MEDE consortium which is composed of 18 university/research partners working in close coordination with the Army Research Laboratory.

The workshop report is available at: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/23562/combat-vehicle-weight-reduction-by-materials-substitution-proceedings-of-a

The Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments Collaborative Research Alliance (MEDE CRA) conducted its Fall Meeting on October 10th, 2018. As lead research organization of the CRA, Johns Hopkins University hosts the event.

The MEDE Fall Meeting is an annual, closed event that brings the entire MEDE CRA together for program overviews, collaborative activities and discussion. In 2018, the event was attended by 130 individuals including special guests from the United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory; US Army Engineer Research and Development Center and members of the MEDE Science Advisory Board. Professor K.T. Ramesh (JHU) and Dr. John Beatty (ARL) led the meeting, which focused on technical collaboration across the MEDE CRA and program planning for the upcoming year.

The MEDE CRA is an integral part of ARL’s Enterprise for Multiscale Research of Materials. The objective of the MEDE CRA is to develop the capability to design, optimize, and fabricate material systems exhibiting revolutionary performance in extreme dynamic environments. The approach is to realize a mechanism-based, “materials-by-design” capability that focuses on advancing the fundamental understanding of materials in relevant high-strain-rate and high-stress regimes. Model materials in the areas of metals, ceramics, composites and polymers are being investigated to improve protection for soldiers and vehicles.

On Monday, July 30th, Maryland Congressional Defense Legislative Staffers representing the offices of Senator Ben Cardin, Senator Van Hollen, Congressman Ruppersberger, Congressman Sarbanes, and Congressman Hoyer visited HEMI to learn more about our CMEDE-related activities and to view our laboratories.

The Center for Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments is a multi-institutional collaborative research center located within the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The Center brings together academia, government, and industry to advance the state of the art for materials in extreme dynamic environments.

The Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments (MEDE) program is investigating three material systems which have significant potential for improving protection performance. Johns Hopkins University leads the MEDE Collaborative Research Alliance which includes partners across 10 states, the United Kingdom, and Germany. These partners, in close collaboration with the Army Research Laboratory, are leading the development of a materials-by-design capability integrating state-of-the-art experiments, advanced computational models, and synthesis and processing.