Application of computational thermodynamics to design materials for sustainable energy production (10/11/22)
Speaker and Affliation:
Dr. Soumya Sridar
Research Assistant Professor
Physical Metallurgy and Materials Design Laboratory
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA
When?
10th November, 2022 (Thursday), 05:30 PM (India Standard Time)
Location
Abstract
Development of sustainable energy is inevitable due to the ever-growing demand for energy. A crucial route to achieve sustainable energy resources that are efficient and economically viable is by fine tuning the performance of materials with appropriate structure and properties. Computational thermodynamics is a powerful tool for designing new materials as well as modifying the structure and properties of existing materials for an intended application. This talk will demonstrate how thermodynamic and kinetic simulations can be employed for the design of materials for sustainable use of existing energy resources, with two case studies. In the first case study, the application of CALPHAD (Calculation of Phase Diagrams) method to optimize the Gibbs energy functions for all the phases in a multicomponent chloride salt system which is important for nuclear fuel reprocessing and thermodynamic calculations to predict the critical properties using the developed database will be discussed. In the second case study, the design of a graded transition interlayer using high-throughput CALPHAD computations for joining dissimilar materials that are commonly employed in advanced ultra-supercritical power plants as well as application of diffusion and Scheil simulations for determining the location-specific solidification cracking susceptibility of graded alloys will be presented.