Antonios Kontsos, a P.C. Chou Endowed Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, recently received the 2014 ONR Young Investigator Program award for his proposal titled, “Identification of Fatigue Precursors for Multi-scale NDE & Prognostics.” This highly prestigious award received by Kontsos is one of only 24 awardees nationwide.
This research project focuses on providing a path for effectively implementing Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) diagnostics and prognostics hardware (i.e., sensors and sensing networks) and software (i.e., signal processing, statistical and probabilistic tools) to identify precursors to materials fatigue.
“This award provides a great opportunity to link research in NDE methods with advances in multiscale mechanics of materials to deal with fatigue which is perhaps the most dominant cause of structural failure,” Kontsos said.
Specifically, Kontsos’ research will be performed in what has recently been called Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) framework to directly identify and quantify critical relationships between material microstructural changes and fatigue behavior, and implement physics-based computational modeling of fatigue damage incubation. To achieve these goals, Kontsos proposes the use of in situ/ex situ observations of deformation and fracture of metallic alloys used in naval applications coupled with novel NDE measurements to understand early stages of fatigue damage. The approach taken intends to address current and future needs to meet the structural performance, safety and life expectancy requirements at a system level which fundamentally affect the way damage-tolerant structures are designed.
Kontsos is currently the Director of the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Group (TAMG). His research interests are in the area of applied mechanics with an emphasis on theoretical, experimental, computational and probabilistic methods in two topics: understanding the role of material structure in complex/multifunctional behavior of modern alloys and composite materials, and identification of damage in material systems and structures in Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering applications.