New materials for advanced applications : Metallic glasses with high mechanical performance and flexible piezoelectrics for energy production

Abstract

This work will introduce two students to two families of new materials. The first family is composed by metallic glasses, which are amorphous metallic alloys. These materials have very interesting mechanical properties, showing very high resiliency and yield stress. These properties make them very promising materials for high performance mechanical applications. The students will learn how to produce the materials by using an arc melting furnace and a melt spinner, and to analyze its mechanical behavior in a dynamo-mechanical analyzer. The second family of materials is composed by flexible piezoelectric ribbons. These materials are susceptible to produce electric power when they are hold in an air flow, for example produced by wind. The students will perform experiments in a windtunnel, measuring the produced power as a function of the flow speed. Furthermore, a CFD model will be built to describe the flow around the piezoelectric ribbon.