Prof. Chandran Led Team Receives ARPA-E Ultimate Grant Award

A University of Utah team lead by Dr. Ravi Chandran, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, which includes Dr. Taylor Sparks, Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, and Dr. Wenda Tan, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering has been awarded $800,000 as the Phase-I finding form ARPA-E Ultimate program and involves the development of next generation high temperature alloys.

Current generation of high temperature alloys for aircraft jet turbines are dominated by nickel base alloys, but their capabilities are limited to about 1100C turbine operating temperature. Alloys for higher temperature, about 1300C, inevitably require new alloys based on refractory metals. The team will use physical metallurgy principles for alloy design, assisted by machine learning, CALPHAD phase diagram simulations, phase field modeling and rapid powder metallurgy processing of alloys to make new alloys and prototype samples to meet the ARPA-E specifications.

The newly funded research project begins May 2021.