An Atoms to Autos Approach for Materials Innovations for Lightweighting: An LMD Symposium in Honor of Anil K. Sachdev: Materials Processing and Vehicle Electrification
Sponsored by: TMS Light Metals Division, TMS: Magnesium Committee
Program Organizers: Alan Luo, Ohio State University; Michele Manuel, University of Florida; Yue Qi, Brown University
Wednesday 8:30 AM
March 6, 2024
Room: Windermere X-2
Location: Hyatt
Session Chair: Yue Qi, Brown University
8:30 AM Keynote
Liquid Metallurgy Processing for Reuse of Al Scrap: Diran Apelian1; Shri Shankar1; Raquel Jaime1; 1University of Caliornia-Irvine
The amount of Al that is being produced from Bauxite (primary Al) has dramatically increased during the last few decades, and there is a large amount of end of life (EOL) Al that is available for reuse. It is well known that the carbon footprint as well as the reduction of energy consumed when Al scrap is reused is significant. At the ACRC we have embarked on a major effort to produce a “green” Al alloy produced 100% from Al scrap. The traditional route has been sorting of the scrap into its alloy families, blending, melt and cast specific alloy designations. Our approach has been to alleviate sorting and to directly melt the AL scrap (e.g., twitch) and applying metallurgical processing technologies. We are naming this route “liquid metallurgy processing -LMP”. The methodologies, and processing details will be reviewed, results presented and discussed.
8:50 AM Invited
Lightweighting Solutions Enabled by Sustainable Low-Carbon Footprint Alloys and Processes: Jianfeng Wang1; Henry Zhan1; Zhou Wang1; Ming Liu1; 1General Motors Global Research and Development
The transportation section is ranked as the 2nd contributor to global warming for its production and use of fossil fuel powered vehicles. As the industry transitions to an all-electric future, greenhouse gas emission from vehicle’s tailpipe will become zero with clean electricity. Meanwhile, decarbonization of vehicle production and adoption of low-carbon footprint materials are critical to achieve carbon neutrality. This talk summarizes recent progresses on the development of low-carbon footprint alloys and component fabrication processes: 1) a coating-free press hardening steel with 1.7 GPa tensile strength that can be made with 50% steel scrap, and 2) a new casting aluminum alloy, using a significant percentage of post-consumer aluminum scrap, that is suitable for both low pressure and high pressure die casting processes. The potential of simplifying materials selection for easy recycling of end-of-life vehicles is also discussed, with the newly proposed concept of UniSteel and UniCast.
9:10 AM
Influence of Recycled Alloy Additions on the Microstructure and Plane Strain Deformation of Wrought Aluminum Alloys: Chaitali Patil1; Tracy Berman1; Minju Kang2; Chal Park2; John Allison1; 1University of Michgan; 2Novelis
Wrought aluminum products at the end of their life cycle are generally downcycled to cast alloys. Instead of downcycling, recycling of these products for new wrought alloys can provide significant economical as well as environmental benefits. Hence, understanding the influence of increased alloy additions in the recycled wrought aluminum alloys is an important step towards achieving a circular economy of the wrought aluminum products. Therefore, we systematically increased copper, magnesium, and silicon content in the 5XXX and 6xxx alloys. The micro-segregation of these elements in the as-cast alloys and dissolution kinetics of the constituent phases during the homogenization processes is then studied. Finally, microstructural characteristics and dynamic recrystallization of the high recycled content alloys during the hot deformation is analyzed. Additionally, analytical models are developed for the micro-segregation of alloying elements which can be used for the assessment of solute segregation in a range of recycled aluminum alloy compositions.
9:30 AM Invited
Solidification Processing of Metal Matrix Composites for Transportation Applications: Pradeep Rohatgi1; Dave Weiss2; Tirumalai Srivatsan3; 1University of Wisconsin; 2Intelligent Composites; 3The University of Akron
This paper reviews the progress of solidification processing of cast metal matrix composites since their original discovery, which was first published in 1969. Current uses of metal matrix composite components in automobiles, railways, space, computer hardware, and recreational equipment are presented. Some cast metal matrix composites which are discussed include aluminum reinforced with graphite, silicon carbide, alumina, and graphene. Several critical issues in solidification processing of metal matrix composites, including nucleation, growth, and the thermo-physical properties of the melts on micro-segregation, and particle pushing or engulfment during solidification are discussed. Current and future directions in solidification processing of cast metal matrix composites are presented, including the synthesis of self-lubricating, self-healing, self-cleaning composites, nanocomposites, and functionally gradient composites. Current and future uses of metal matrix composites as brake rotors, drive shafts, pistons, engine blocks, cylinder liners, intake valves, compressor housing, and electronic packaging in transportation, including electric vehicles, are presented.
9:50 AM Break
10:10 AM Keynote
Battery500 Consortium: Understanding and Addressing the Fundamental Challenges in Rechargeable Lithium Metal Batteries: Jie Xiao1; 1Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
To significantly boost the energy of the state-of-art lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries, one of the most effective approaches is to replace graphite anode with Li metal which is ultralight but energy concentrated. However, its thermodynamically instable nature in liquid electrolytes causes many well-known problems such as dendrite formation which plagues the implementation of the proposed technology. This talk will discuss the fundamental challenges of utilizing Li metal anode in at cell-level. A Li metal prototype pouch cell with 350 Wh/kg energy with more than 350 cycles will be demonstrated. The key fundamentals that enable the long-term cycling of Li metal anodes in pouch cells are discussed and the root causes of the poor cycling of realistic Li metal pouch cells have been revisited. A series of fundamentally new insights have been provided to inspire scientific innovations to tackle the real challenges of developing next-generation battery technologies.
10:30 AM Invited
Magnetic Materials for EV Traction Motors: Jun Cui1; Jun Cui2; Gaoyuan Ouyang2; Iver Anderson2; Matt Kramer2; 1Iowa State University; 2Ames National Laboratory
To implement the high-speed high power density strategy for EV motor, the current 3.2%-Si steel must be replaced with a new material that is more efficient. Fe-6.5%Si is a good candidate, but it is difficult to fabricate using the traditional cold-roll process. Here, I will discuss the relationship among cooling rate, chemical ordering, mechanical, and magnetic properties of Fe-6.5%Si during the melt spinning process, which lays the foundation for making Fe-6.5%Si ribbon with tunable ductility. Although soft magnetic material alone can power a motor, a motor with permanent magnets (PM) is more efficient. Nd-Fe-B-based PM is dominant. Meeting EV’s demand on Nd-PM requires a 2x increase in Nd production by 2030. Moreover, Nd-PM without heavy rare earth elements (HREE) have poor coercivity above 150°C. In the second part of this talk, I will discuss the grain boundary engineering approach to produce the HREE-free Nd-PM for higher temperature application.
10:50 AM Invited
Multiscale Simulations of Thin Passivation Layers --- From Aluminum Forming to Lithium-Ion Battery Durability: Yue Qi1; 1Brown University
Spontaneously formed passivation layers, as thin as nanometers, can kinetically hinder reactions and enable many important applications, such as stainless steel, aluminum, and lithium metal electrode. A series of computational methods, starting from quantum mechanics, were developed to probe the details of their formation, growth, deformation processes that are hard to measure. For chemical-mechanical coupled problems, the interplay between the strain rate and oxidation rate was captured by reactive molecular dynamics simulations and an analytical model, which can be extended to macro-scale. To capture the electrochemical reactions at a passivated interface, the energy landscape for the fundamental charge transfer reaction was captured the quantum mechanics level and used to inform phase field models in order to capture the Li-dendrite growth process. These examples highlight the importance of solving the intertwined chemical-mechanical and electrochemical-mechanical coupled problems in many applications, ranging from aluminum forming to lithium dendrite growth in batteries.
11:10 AM
Micro-mechanics of Li Metal for High Energy Battery Applications: A Full-field Crystal Plasticity Approach: Supriyo Chakraborty1; 1Max-Planck-Institut fur Eisenforschung GmbH
Although lithium metal batteries have the highest energy density, issues like void formation and dendrite growth limit the practical application of these batteries. One solution is to apply stack pressure to activate plastic flow of Li metal and maintaining a proper contact between the Li anode and the electrolyte. However, the present approaches do not consider microstructure sensitive mechanical response of Li metal. Here we used DAMASK crystal plasticity simulation toolkit to study the micro-mechanical field evolution in Li metal under compressive loading. Experimentally observed Li foil and plated microstructures were considered. Effects of crystallographic texture, grain morphology and grain size distribution have been studied in terms of required stress, plastic flow anisotropy and stress triaxiality. Finally, a microstructure dependent deformation map is developed to identify and control the critical microstructural features to harness the stack pressure most effectively.
11:30 AM Invited
Understanding Chemical and Structural Organization in Cation Disordered Rocksalt Oxides for Li-ion Batteries: Megan Butala1; John Langhout1; 1University of Florida
Cation disordered rocksalt oxide electrodes have high chemical versatility and comparable or better energy density than commercial Li-ion battery cathodes. This emerging class of materials could alleviate reliance on expensive, geographically-concentrated materials. To realize the promise of disordered rocksalt oxide cathodes requires overcoming seemingly inherent ionic transport limitations that necessitate sub-micron-sized particles and careful incorporation of conductive carbon additives. Broad sampling of chemical space has led to new empirical understanding of structure-property relationships, especially between the size and charge of constituent cations and short-range chemical ordering. However, fundamental questions of how constituent cations affect structure and ion transport behavior remain. To address these open questions, we elucidating new understanding of the key cation features that affect hierarchical chemical and structural organization in a narrower compositional range. To do so, we combine average and local structure characterization methods and propose a conceptual framework to reconcile hierarchical chemical and structural features.
11:50 AM Invited
High Entropy Alloys: A Path Toward Wider Alloy Variety for Future Recycled Lightweight Alloys: Mitra Taheri1; Emily Holcombe1; Sebastian Lech1; Deb Sur2; John Scully2; Jason Hattrick-Simpers3; Howard Joress4; Brian DeCost4; Loic Perriere5; Jean-Philippe Couzinie5; 1Johns Hopkins University; 2University of Virginia; 3University of Toronto; 4National Institute of Standards and Technology; 5University of Paris-EST (UPEC)
Lightweight alloys are a natural landscape for recycle and reuse, but variability in alloy chemistry remains a challenge for optimizing properties of alloys containing wide compositional varieties. For traditional lightweight alloys, specifications are narrow, however high entropy alloys provide a landscape on which to develop lightweight compositions that match traditional alloys in properties. Here we present progress toward high aluminum content high entropy alloys with properties rivaling stainless steels, and a possible path for reuse of existing alloys through these complex compositions. The work provides a foundation for future lightweight alloy sustainability.