Proyectos I+D+i -Modalidades «Retos Investigación» y «Generación de Conocimiento»

Proyecto PID2019-111285RB-I00 financiado por MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033

Region: National
Project period: 2020 – 2023
Principal Investigator: Teresa Pérez Prados (teresa.perez.prado@imdea.org)

Increasing transport sustainability is urgent as 18% of the global man-made emissions are due to transportation. The current urge to preserve the quality of life on our planet has put vehicle lightweighting at the forefront of the technological challenges to be tackled. Along these lines, numerous initiatives have been launched worldwide at national and international levels to address this imperative need. The EU Horizon 2020 programme has issued the Smart, green, and integrated transport challenge and, at a national level, the technical challenge 4 Transporte sostenible, inteligente, conectado, e integrado, was included in the Spanish Strategy of Science, Technology and Innovation for 2013-2020.

Magnesium is the lightest structural metal, the eighth most abundant chemical element in Earth’s crust and is fully recyclable. However, critical improvements in its performance are still needed in order to bring Mg alloys massively into the market. The main obstacles to their widespread commercialization include a poor corrosion resistance, high anisotropy, as well as limited strength and ductility, i.e., poor fracture toughness, in comparison with other structural metals. In particular, poor ductility is due to the large anisotropy in the critical resolved shear stress values of the different slip systems, which results in the activation of a small number of deformation modes. In turn, low strength is the result of the capability of dislocations to shear precipitates, thus rendering them useless as hardening agents.

This proposal aims to address the imperative demand of magnesium alloys with very high strength and ductility, which can be formed into components with high structural performance for ultralight transportation vehicles. It is expected that this research will provide guidelines for multiscale (from nano to macro) Mg alloy design. To that effect, a multiscale characterization approach will be put in place in order to investigate the fundamentals of solute-dislocation interactions, precipitate-dislocation interactions, as well as the effect of solute additions on grain boundary development. High throughput casting methods will be utilized in order to fabricate a wide array of alloys, and micromechanical testing methods will be used to investigate the effect of composition on the CRSS of the different deformation mechanisms. Physical simulation by Gleeble will then be utilized to design polycrystals of different binary and ternary solid solution alloys, in which the influence of alloying additions on the grain boundary misorientation distribution and on the mechanical behavior will be investigated. Finally, precipitated alloys will be fabricated by carefully tailoring aging treatments and alloy design combined with high resolution electron microscopy will be utilized to alter the coherency of precipitate-matrix interfaces with the ambition of hindering particle shearing.

It is expected that the output of this research will result in 7 Q1 publications and 1 patent application, and will allow the team members to maintain their position among the world leaders in Mg research. This work will constitute a fertile ground for the career development of young researchers, which will find IMDEA Materials Institute (María de Maeztu award, 2019) a fantastic place for personal and professional growth.