MIT Team Places 1st in Materials Design Competition with Novel Castable Aluminum Plate
DMSE undergraduate students Louise Anderfaas and Darsh Grewal won 1st place in the ASM Materials Education Foundation’s 2023 Undergraduate Design Competition, for their design of a high-strength aluminum plate in Professor Olson’s Computational Materials Design course (3.041/3.321), coached by postdoctoral associate Dr. Margianna Tzini.
With this design, the team sought to exceed the strength toughness, and stress corrosion cracking resistance of commercially available aluminum alloys by applying calibrated multi-objective thermodynamic and kinetic models to candidate phases selected from a DFT database. Dr. Tzini successfully prototyped and mechanically tested the design.
See the MIT News writeup here. (PDF)
MIT Team Places 3rd in Materials Design Competition with Novel 3D Printable Material
DMSE undergraduate students Ian Chen and Kyle Markland won 3rd place in the ASM Materials Education Foundation’s 2022 Undergraduate Design Competition, for their design of a printable tool steel in Professor Olson’s Computational Materials Design course (3.041/3.321), coached by visiting student Florian Hengsbach.
With this design, the team sought to improve strength and thermal properties of the die casting mold materials in order to enable conformal cooling at the automotive part (meter) scale. Chen and Markland calibrated and utilized thermodynamic material models to optimize the design, and Hengsbach prototyped the material successfully.
See the MIT News writeup here. (PDF)
ASM-CHiMaD Materials Genome Camps
Olson group members volunteered in 2021 (virtually) and 2022-2023 (on MIT campus) to run a 1-week camp funded by CHiMaD and organized by ASM International, CHiMaD, and MIT. The camp hosted 10 high school STEM teachers and taught them about the Materials Genome Initiative, CALPHAD, and the materials design process, including hands-on laboratory experience in fabricating and testing prototype samples of a “frankensteel.”
The camp was featured in this DMSE News Article. (PDF)
See the ASM Materials Education Foundation website for more information on future camps of this type.