Research Interests

In the CMS Group, our research interests revolve around computational modelling of microstructures and their evolution; you might want to take a look at our group's publications. Specifically, our current research is in the following areas:

1. Microstructures: Elastic stress effects
2. Three phase microstructures in ternary alloys
3. Microstructures: Grain boundary effects
4. Microstructures during solidification of binary and ternary alloys

A common theme is the use of an appropriate phase field model (also referred to as diffuse interface model) for the problem being investigated.

Stress effects

There are many technologically important alloys, including Ni-base superalloys and Ti-Al alloys, in which the lattice parameter mismatch between the particle and matrix phases plays an important role in determining the microstructure, in terms of both shape and alignment of particles. The evolution of microstructure in such systems is a result of a complex interplay of factors, which include the symmetry of the misfit (lattice parameter mismatch) strain tensor, anisotropy in elastic moduli, difference in elastic moduli of the two phases, anisotropy in interfacial energy, atomic mobility (which may be position-dependent, for example, through its dependence on composition). Needless to say, this complexity explains the richness of this field!

M.P. Gururajan (Guru) is currently working towards his Ph.D. thesis on this topic.

Ternary alloys

In this work, we study ternary alloy systems in which two phases precipitate out from a single parent phase; the aim is to develop an understanding of the sequence of precipitation, the relative location of precipitates of the two phases, and their coarsening behaviour.

Saswata Bhattacharyya (Saswata) is working on three-phase microstructures in ternary alloys. His current work focusses on ternary spinodal decomposition, with a view to understanding the role of interfacial energy, misfit, anisotropic elastic moduli and a position-dependent atomic mobility.

Grain boundary effects

H. Ramanarayan (Ram) recently completed his Ph.D. thesis on grain boundary effects on spinodal decomposition.

Solidification in binary and ternary alloys

Subhradeep Chatterjee (Deep) is working on this topic for his Ph.D. thesis. We will have more information on this work on this website soon.

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