MINES METALLURGICAL & MATERIALS ENGINEERING

METALLURGY.MINES.EDU

A NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS & SUPPORTERS SPRING 2019

COLORADOSCHOOLOFMINES2

COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES METALLURGICAL & MATERIALS ENGINEERING

COLORADOSCHOOLOFMINES 1500 Illinois Street Golden, CO 80401

303-273-3000 or 800-446-9488

SPRING 2019

A newsletter for friends & supporters of the Colorado School of Mines Department of Metallurgical &

Materials Engineering

MAILING/DELIVERY ADDRESS: 920 15th Street

Golden, CO 80401 MAIN OFFICE:

Hill Hall 201 (T) 303-273-3780 (F) 303-273-3795

METALLURGY.MINES.EDU

MINES.EDU/NEWS

PRESIDENT: Dr. Paul C. Johnson

DEPARTMENT HEAD: Dr. Angus Rockett

arockett@mines.edu

Robots could improve safety of power plant inspection, repair 6

First-Of-Its-Kind Instrument to Call Coorstek Home 7

Materials Informatics Fellowship Trains Next-Gen Workforce 4

Let us know what you think!

Attention Alumni! It would be greatly appreciated if you could take a minute or two to fill out this 4-question survey for the ABET/Assessment Committee. Use the QR code and link to the survey. Thank you!

Also, as part of idigmines Giving Day this year, the Longest Mile Challenge was thrown down to see which department had the donor living furthest away from Golden. This made us curious on which MME alum is furthest away from Golden. If you think it’s you, would you let us know by emailing our department manager, Nancy Progar, at progar@mines.edu? We’d love to know!

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Welcome from Dr. Angus Rockett

Dear Friends of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering,

Spring is a time of change and growth and these are true of things in the George S. Ansell Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering. We

have had a number of transitions since the last newsletter.

First, in an effort to improve cross-campus collaboration and to support one of the key departments on campus, Corby Anderson and Pat Taylor have moved their appointments to the Mining Department. They will continue to advise MME students, keep their space with the MME faculty, continue to teach courses in MME, and have courtesy appointments in the department. We wish them well in the Mining faculty, but we also want them to stay engaged and active within MME where extractive metallurgy is a long-cherished area of research and study. The other transition is that one of our welding faculty, Prof. Stephen Liu has retired effective January 1st. Prof. Liu has been a fixture of the Department for over 30 years, leading a long-standing focus area in welding and holding as the American Bureau of Shipping Chair. His research spans the entire welding field in which he is a recognized leader. While he is retiring we still anticipate seeing Prof. Liu around the building as an emeritus faculty member. He has plans to remain strongly engaged and to continue to support his colleague, Professor Zhenzhen Yu, in the welding area.

In addition to these changes there are many things that are very positive in the Department. We had a successful day of giving, iDigMines on February 7th. We raised thousands of dollars in support of

Looking forward to another great year

F r o m t h e D e p a r t m e n t H e a d

the physical metallurgy laboratory, where we are hoping to add a new high performance optical microscope. Donations are still welcome to aid in that cause. Support of the Department is critical to our success and we would be very happy if you could assist us with maintaining the strength of the program. If you would be willing to make a donation any time and for any cause in the Department please visit Mines Donations Page.

We were thrilled to learn that Prof. John Speer has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. John recently won the Bessemer Medal, the top prize in steel metallurgy worldwide and we are not surprised that he was honored with NAE membership. John’s contributions to the Department and to the steel community are legendary and we are very thankful to have him with us.

We are always happy to hear from you so please contact the Department any time. Our alumni are our academic family. Wherever you are we are proud of you and glad to call you a MME Miner.

Best wishes for a joyful 2019 and stay in touch,

Dr. Angus Rockettarockett@mines.edu

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A group of Colorado School of Mines students spent their summer getting a hands-on introduction to the burgeoning field, thanks to a newly expanded fellowship program.

The Citrine NextGen Fellowship, with additional support from Mines’ Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies (ADAPT) and College of Engineering and Computational Sciences, supported six undergraduate students at Mines this summer – five who attend Mines and one from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The 10-week paid fellowship enabled students to conduct research on campus, provided extensive training in data management and data science, and provided mentorship from Citrine Informatics’ data science and data engineering teams.

With a $400,000 commitment from Schmidt Futures for 2018 and additional funds from the National Science Foundation, Citrine Informatics is sponsoring fellows at Mines and four other institutions across the nation this summer: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carnegie Mellon University, North Carolina State University and Texas A&M University.

“The academic community is a crucial partner in spreading the adoption of advanced analytics in materials science,” said Josh Tappan, the startup’s community manager.

At Mines, the fellows are working in labs across campus, focusing on a range of research topics.

Materials informatics fellowship trains next-gen workforce

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Advising the students are Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Aaron Stebner, Research Assistant Professor Branden Kappes, Assistant Professor Garritt Tucker and Professor Cristian Ciobanu; Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Associate Professors Jeff King and Kip Findley; Physics Assistant Professor Jeramy Zimmerman and Associate Professor Eric Toberer; and Computer Science Associate Professor Hua Wang.

“Machine learning and artificial intelligence are expected to dramatically impact materials science and engineering in decades to come… Training students at the intersection of data and materials sciences creates the workforce that will lead these advancements,” said Stebner, who is leading the fellowship program at Mines. “At Mines, we are committed to turning out graduates that are the leaders of this field for decades to come. To date, much of our work in this area has been carried out in graduate education and research projects. The partnership with the NextGen program solidifies our commitment to also provide world-class undergraduate training in this emerging field.”

Abbey Zorn, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, is working with Stebner and Kappes, taking X-ray computed tomography images of additively manufactured parts to create a correlation between porosity and the laser parameters used to create the part. She was drawn to materials informatics because of her minor in computer science, a field she plans to pursue as a graduate student.

“I have never done research before, but Dr. Stebner is my client for my senior design project and he recommended the fellowship to me,” Zorn said. The experience has given her valuable real-world insight into how research works, she said. “It is a slow-moving and rewarding process that took me time to get used to. Since progress is marked by knowledge gained, it can sometimes be difficult to gauge how far you’ve come,” Zorn said. “But I learned a lot this summer and am happy that I had this experience.”

Applications for the 2019 Citrine NextGen Fellowship will open in February.

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CoorsTek sculpture transforms aluminum oxide into artA new art installation – made of 240 specially designed aluminum oxide ceramic tiles manufactured by CoorsTek – now crowns the ceiling of the CoorsTek Center for Applied Science and Engineering.

Artists David Cole and Michael Brown were on campus this summer to unveil the sculpture, Luminous Waveforms, along with the stakeholders involved in bringing the installation to life, including CoorsTek Co-CEOs Michael Coors ‘06 and Timothy Coors ‘01 and Chief Technology Officer Randel Mercer.

“Typically, our ceramics are for industrial purposes or scientific purposes, but we think that science is beautiful and that there’s art to be found in all kinds of areas – including ceramics,” Michael Coors said at the unveiling. “We’re proud to showcase that here.”

In 2014, CoorsTek and the Coors family announced a $27 million commitment to fund a new research partnership and construction of a modern research and teaching facility at Mines. The investment was the largest single private commitment in Mines’ 143-year history, expanding upon a longstanding academic, research and career opportunity partnership between CoorsTek and the school. The state of Colorado also provided $14.6 million in funding to make the CoorsTek Center a reality. The research and teaching facility opened for classes in January.

The art installation project began with a call for artists, where interested parties were given a description of the building plus the stipulation that the art piece would include ceramic materials manufactured by CoorsTek. Four finalists were

chosen to visit the CoorsTek Center, meet with the project committee and tour two CoorsTek manufacturing facilities to gain a greater understanding of the medium they were required to use.

The material was chosen because its translucency allowed LEDs to illuminate each tile from behind. The mechanical movement of the tiles and the patterns displayed by the LEDs are inspired by the laws of physics and activated by the movement of students below the artwork. The piece is entirely original and almost everything was fabricated from scratch.

“Michael and I are both fascinated by industry and science, and felt particularly engaged by this opportunity,” said David Cole, co-artist of Luminous Waveforms. “It was on a tour of a CoorsTek facility that we found a beautiful cylinder made of very pure alumina. When we shone a light through the material, the whole object glowed, and the seed of our idea was formed.”

The Mines Physics Department calls the CoorsTek building home and Professor Jeff Squier said Luminous Waveforms should resonate with the Mines community.

“Understanding structure and function over extraordinary spatial and temporal scales is one of the grand multidisciplinary challenges being explored by Mines students and faculty,” Squier said. “Luminous Waveforms really encapsulates this research challenge, with a dynamic sculpture that interacts with its environment and is continuously changing its physical shape and the signal pathways exhibited by the LED lighting.”

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Robots could improve safety of power plant inspection, repair

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A Colorado School of Mines assistant professor has been awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop an artificial intelligence-enabled robot capable of inspecting and repairing power plant boilers.

Hao Zhang, assistant professor of computer science, is the primary investigator on the project, which will receive $400,000 over three years from the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy.

“Our goal is to develop an integrated autonomous robot that is equipped with advanced onboard sensors to perform real-time inspection of threats on boiler furnace walls, operate a repair device to achieve live repair, and use artificial intelligence to enable smart data gathering and autonomy,” Zhang said. “Our robot will be designed to bridge the technological gaps in live inspecting and repairing of power plant boilers – reducing the risk for human operators and increasing boiler reliability, usability and efficiency.”

More specifically, Zhang and his team plan to develop live Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) sensors with signal processing techniques and reliability analysis, as well as design and evaluate live repair devices for robots based on fusion and solid-state technologies. The robot itself will be able to attach to and navigate vertical boiler furnace walls using magnetic drive tracks.

“Boilers are the largest and one of the most critical components of a thermal power plant, which convert energy contained in fuel, like coal, into high temperature steam. Damage can occur in the boiler furnace chamber – damage that if left unchecked can cause catastrophic failures, causing loss of life and other serious safety issues,” Zhang said. “Boiler maintenance is challenging and dangerous for inspectors working on scaffolding in the confined space inside a boiler.”

An automated robot that can both inspect and repair boiler walls could eliminate the need to send operators into those difficult-to-access or hazardous areas, as well as the time-consuming and expensive scaffolding installation and de-installation, he said.

The interdisciplinary research team includes Zhang as the AI robotics lead; Andrew Petruska, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, as the robotics platform lead; Zhenzhen Yu, assistant professor of metallurgical and materials engineering, as the repair lead; and Yiming Deng of Michigan State University as the NDE lead. Stephen Liu, professor of metallurgical and materials engineering and American Bureau of Shipping Endowed Chair at Mines, and Lalita Udpa of MSU will serve as the senior personnel on the project. The team is also closely collaborating with industry partners, including Xcel Energy and EnergynTech Inc.

Our Department Head, Angus Rockett, met with Provost Tom Boyd, President Paul Johnson, and our Dean Mike Kaufman early February for a review of the status of the Department, current plans and how it has addressed items in our Pathways to Distinction document. They sent him this response following the meeting:

“The MME Department is one of our strongest departments on campus. It has succeeded in approaching all of its Pathways 2024 milestones as early as FY19, with strong graduate enrollment, exceptionally strong sponsored research programs, and growing undergraduate enrollment. The Department’s faculty are to be congratulated for their efforts.”

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Robots could improve safety of power plant inspection, repair

First-of-its-kind instrument to call CoorsTek Center homeA Colorado School of Mines professor has secured National Science Foundation funding for a state-of-the-art instrument that will allow researchers to gain a three-dimensional view of the shape, composition and bonding of a wide variety of materials.

David Diercks, research assistant professor of metallurgical and materials engineering, was recently awarded $999,700 from the NSF Major Research Instrumentation program to purchase a Raman imaging-scanning electron microscope/focused ion beam instrument that will be openly available to academic researchers.

And while instruments with some of the same capabilities currently exist in private facilities, the Mines instrument will be the first of its kind located in an open facility anywhere in the world.

That facility will be the International Center for Multiscale Characterization (ICMC), led by Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Associate Professors Corinne Packard and Brian Gorman and housed in the new CoorsTek Center for Applied Science and Engineering.

“What’s unique is it combines multiple capabilities into one platform,” Diercks said. “They’re all things that right now can be done individually and you could potentially transfer between platforms. But in the least, it’s inconvenient. At the worst, it’s impossible. Together, the whole instrument facilitates unprecedented access to three-dimensional phase, bonding, structure, morphology and compositional relationship analysis spanning many orders of magnitude in length.”

Among the components are a scanning electron microscope that can image surface shape and structure and an X-ray spectroscopy detector to measure composition. More unique, though, is the Raman spectrometer, which shows how a material’s atoms are bonded to each other.

“Knowing the composition isn’t always sufficient. Just changing how atoms are bonded greatly changes the material’s properties,” Diercks said. “The best example I can give is graphite and diamond – they are both entirely made of carbon but they’re very different materials. Diamond is very hard and graphite is very soft and slippery. The thing

that’s different is just how they’re bonded to each other. If you just look at the composition you’d say it’s carbon. But by knowing how it’s bonded, you can know whether it’s diamond or graphite.”

The instrument will also have a focused ion beam, which will allow researchers to slice into the material and look at all three aspects – shape, composition and bonding – in three dimensions. The instrument should have applications in a wide variety of fields, including ceramics, geology and biomaterials, Diercks said.

Information about how the three aspects evolve as a function of temperature will be available, as well, thanks to the instrument’s heating stage.

Co-PIs on the project are Alexis Navarre-Sitchler, associate professor of geology and geological engineering, and Melissa Krebs, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering.

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Zhenzhen Yu, assistant professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at Colorado School of Mines, has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for work to accelerate the design of interlayer alloys for use in the joining of dissimilar materials.

The project, “Understanding of Diffusion and Deformation Mechanisms in Multi-Principal Element Alloy Interlayers for Manufacturing of Multi-Material Structures,” will receive $500,000 over five years.

Those multi-principal element alloy interlayers could have a wide range of applications, particularly in the automotive, aerospace, additive manufacturing and power generation industries, Yu said.

“In almost every manufacturing sector, challenges exist in joining dissimilar materials due to the mismatches in their thermal, physical and chemical properties. Take a gas turbine – it can transition from titanium to steel to aluminum or nickel-based superalloys, but there are known problems especially for titanium to steel and aluminum to steel,” Yu said. “What we’re trying to do is to avoid direct contact between those incompatible metals – we want to put an interlayer between them as a buffer and this interlayer material will be compatible with both sides.”

Traditionally, interlayer alloys have combined one to two alloy elements, with limited to no success. Yu and her team plans to use five or six different elements to create a high-entropy alloy, with the help of computational design methodology.

“Conventionally, the material design process is trial and error. But think about the periodic table and how many elements you have in there – if you want to choose five or six metallic elements and combine them together, you could have more than 7,000 different choices,” Yu said. “We’re going to do a computer design process, using advanced software

Yu wins NSF CAREER award for interlayer alloy design

A w a r d s & a c c o l a d e s

to filter out the options and quickly narrow down the ranges we should look into.”

From there, researchers will use advanced in situ characterization tools to validate the properties of the new multi-principal element alloys.

“Welding is a 250-year-old subject and it would seem like everything has been well studied. But welding needs science – welding is science – it’s welding chemistry, how the atoms interact with each other during the welding process,” Yu said. “Whenever you have new materials developed, you need to know what the weldability looks like. How is the compatibility with the existing materials you’re going to join them to? You can bypass that by using mechanical threading, but in a lot of cases, you need welding to have a smooth transition.”

As part of the project, Yu will work with the Manufacturing and Materials Joining Innovation Center (Ma2JIC), an NSF-funded Industry and University Cooperative Research Center of which Mines is a partner, as well as the local chapters of the American Welding Society and American Society for Metals, to provide new opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to interact with industry. She also plans to do K-12 outreach through a number of programs, including Mines’ Girl Scout Engineering Day and Girls Lead the Way.

Yu joined Mines and the Center for Welding, Joining and Coatings Research in 2014. She holds a PhD and master’s degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Tennessee and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the East China University of Science and Technology.

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Brennecka named Fryrear Chair for Innovation and ExcellenceCreating and advancing a distinctive graduate student experience at Colorado School of Mines will be the focus of the 2018 awardee of the Ben L. Fryrear Endowed Chair for Innovation and Excellence.

Geoff Brennecka, associate professor of metallurgical and materials engineering, is the third Mines faculty member to be named a Fryrear Chair since the chairship was endowed by Mines alumnus Ben Fryrear ’62 to recognize and support highly accomplished faculty members driving institutional change.

He joins Kamini Singha, professor of geology and geological engineering, and Eric Toberer, associate professor of physics, the inaugural chairs who were appointed in 2017. Each Fryrear Chair receives $25,000 in discretionary funds each year for three years, in exchange for driving a strategic initiative or program during that time that furthers the vision and mission of Mines. A fourth Fryrear Chair will be named in 2019.

“Geoff has a passion and energy for engaging students in ways that will help us build a stronger graduate community while also strengthening and broadening the skills we impart on our graduate students. His efforts to build programs around competitive fellowship opportunities dovetail and complement nicely synergistic efforts to enhance our overall graduate experience being led by Roel Snieder and Wendy Zhou,” Interim Provost Tom Boyd said. “The opportunity to build a team around this topic allows us, by leveraging the skills and passions of these three highly effective faculty members, to more effectively advance our goal of creating a signature graduate experience consistent with President Johnson’s MINES@150 goals.”

Brennecka joined Mines in 2014 after spending eight years as technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He earned his PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ceramic engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla, now Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Brennecka is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Mines Dean’s Excellence Award. He previously served on the Board of Directors for the American Ceramic Society and IEEE-UFFC and is currently on the Board of Directors of the Ceramics

and Glass Industry Foundation, as well as editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

During his Fryrear term, Brennecka will work closely with Graduate Dean Wendy Zhou and Roel Snieder, the W. M. Keck Distinguished Professor and Director of Professional Enhancement and Innovation, on improving the graduate student experience. More specifically, he plans to focus on creating and supporting activities and opportunities for incoming graduate student cohorts that position them better for success while at Mines and beyond.

As part of these efforts, he will develop an active program that engages, encourages and assists first-year PhD students in applying for national and internationally competitive fellowships, with a MINES@150 goal of having 10 percent of the incoming PhD class supported by prestigious external awards by 2024.

“Graduate school is about more than just classes and a thesis. We also want our grad students to learn from and support each other as part of a richer graduate experience,” Brennecka said. “While the initial focus will be on increasing fellowship success, the broader goal is all about accumulating small changes to make our graduate student community happier, more productive and to help position them even better for success in grad school and beyond.”

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Colorado School of Mines continued its traditional strong showing at the annual meeting of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, winning the Materials Bowl and taking second place in the Bladesmithing Competition.

Metallurgical and materials engineering students made up the team that won the Materials Bowl, a materials-themed knowledge and trivia competition that has been held yearly since 2007. Mines has won the contest seven times, including in 2018; no other school has won it more than twice.

Jerry Bourne, the Assistant Department Head who organized this event said, “The semi-final round against the University of Florida was the toughest match. Florida has really stepped up their game. The final round against U of Tenn was also a challenge, but our Orediggers prevailed in the end.”

The team members this year were Colin Gilgenbach, Kaitlyn Nagel, Melissa Thrun, John Copley and Victoria Avance (left to right).

For the Bladesmithing Competition, the Mines team crafted a raindrop-pattern welded Damascus chef knife featuring an integral bolster and a stabilized Douglas fir burl handle.

Mines students show materials knowledge, bladesmithing skills

m a t e r i a l s b o w l

A billet was created using alternating sheets of two different steel compositions, heated above 1000°C, and forge-welded together. The raindrop pattern appeared from holes machined into the layered billet where the alternating compositions were then deformed during the forging process. When finished, the blade was etched using ferric chloride to bring out the contrast between the two different steels and add the Mines logo.

On the bladesmithing team were undergraduate students Stuart Shirley and Itamar Brill, metallurgical and materials engineering, and Tyler Mertens, mechanical engineering; and graduate students Ty Porter, metallurgical and materials engineering, and Matt Zappulla, mechanical engineering. The team received assistance from Dan McNeil of Black Birch Studio in Golden.

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A look at 2019 for MMEb y t h e n u m b e r s

Total On-Campus Award

2017 2018

20%OF TOTAL CAMPUS

RESEARCH EXPENDITURES

$1,800,000

INCREASE FROM 2017 FUNDING

1.5-2x

MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN DEPARTMENTS WITH GREATER

PROPOSAL VOLUME

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1500 ILLINOIS ST. GOLDEN, CO 80401-1887

DEPARTMENT OF METALLURGICAL &

MATERIALS

ENGINEERING

SUPPORT MMEA gift to the George S. Ansell Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering is an investment in the future.

Gifts can support scholarships, fellowships, professorships, academic programs, faculty research and other initiatives that are not typically supported through state appropriations. Private philanthropy empowers the Department to achieve greater excellence in research and education.

To learn more about supporting the Department, contact the Mines Foundation.

GIVING.MINES.EDU or 303.273.3275