Mechanical Behavior of Materials

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering is involved in studying mechanical behaviour of a wide variety of materials ranging from conventional metals and alloys, ceramics and polymers to hybrid materials and biomaterials at different length and time scales. Various mechanical testing procedures like conventional tensile and compression test, torsion test are routinely carried out on different standard and sub-standard samples along with indentation experiments that give information of macro hardness, micro as well as nano-hardness and scratch test. The department is also involved in studying the response of materials in service by carrying our fatigue, creep and combined fatigue-creep experiments. In addition, the mechanical behaviour of materials in different chemical environments is also studied using a slow strain rate apparatus fitted with an environment chamber. The department is actively pursuing research in mechanical behaviour of soft matter including cells, using state of the art atomic force microscopy and nano-indentation tools. Another area of investigation is in the field of combinatorial materials testing that encompasses simultaneous materials characterization along with testing to provide in-situ knowledge of the underlying micro-mechanisms of deformation. A field emission gun scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive spectroscopy and electron back scatter diffraction facility coupled with a hot tensile stage is used to provide a combinatorial analysis of structure, chemistry and microstructure as a function of imposed deformation. The department also pursues computational investigations pertaining to mechanical behaviour of materials using a variety of tools like commercially available finite element tools, object oriented finite element tools and viscoplastic and elastoplastic simulation modules.