Nov 9, 2020 | No Comments | By Vivian Sun
Congratulations to Jaafar El-Awady, HEMI Fellow and associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, for discovering a new method to predict cracks in metal before they appear. His results were published in Science.
His paper, titled “The heterogeneity of persistent slip band nucleation and evolution in metals at the micrometer scale,” identifies a new method to test metals and predict vulnerabilities before visible cracks are formed. This has implications in understanding and predicting the life of a metal mechanism, especially to help prevent fatigue failure and to avoid discarding parts that may still be useful.
“We’re able now to have a more fundamental understanding about what leads up to cracks,” El-Awady said. “The practical implication is that it will allow us to understand and predict when or how the material is going to fail.”
Read El-Awady’s paper here.
