CE Seminar by Asghar Aryanfar – Dendritic Evolution vs Branched Fracture: From Degradation in Rechargeable Batteries to Corrosion Cracking in Extreme States

KOÇ UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

ENGINEERING SEMINAR SERIES

Speaker: Dr. Asghar Aryanfar

Title: Dendritic Evolution vs Branched Fracture: From Degradation in Rechargeable Batteries to Corrosion Cracking in Extreme States

Date: Monday – July 13, 2020

Time: 13:00 – 13:45

Place: Zoom

Abstract

The mechanical failure due to electrochemical reaction is a runaway multi-physics and chemistry phenomenon with the critical role on the safety and reliability of personal devices and industrial components in various scales. A predictive investigation would require developing competent framework extendable to realistic scales in time and space, beyond the scale of atomistic interactions. Two particular scenarios include the dendritic formation of microstructure during charge-discharge cycling of rechargeable batteries and the corrosion of cooling pipelines in the nuclear power plants. We address them as follows:

We model the branched microstructural growth in rechargeable batteries by developing a coarsegrained (CG) model for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, which works based on statistical averages and neglects the lower order effects. In a closer perspective, we address the role of geometry of the interface and the boundary conditions on the dynamics of branched evolution. We carry out experimental verification via designing a transparent cell, capable of in-situ investigation in larger scale, observable with naked eye, and image processing.

We develop a percolation-based mechanism for the coupled diffusion-reaction corrosion of metals in real time, particularly when exposed to heterogeneous fracture. We develop a rate We unravel the mechanism of real-time interplay between diffusion and electro-migration propagation fronts and the role of environmental variables on corrosion kinetics.

Bio

Dr. Asghar Aryanfar received the B.S. in Civil and Mechanical Engineering (double major, Top 2%) from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 2009 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from California Institute of Technology, in 2010 and 2015, respectively. He is currently Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at American University of Beirut. He was Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul. Before that he was Postdoctoral Associate at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 2015 to 2016. Aryanfar’s research has been in the application of experimental electrochemistry and multi-physics modeling to energy storage materials and their interfaces. Particularly, his research on lithium-metal based rechargeable batteries has appeared as the Cover image in Journal of Chemical Physics  and he has appeared in CNN for his other inventions. Current projects include analysis and design of state-of-the-art sustainable rechargeable lithium metal batteries and prediction of heterogeneous cracking behavior for electrolytic membranes exposed to extreme temperatures/pressures.