Prof. Wei Cai’s group at the Department of Mechanical Engineering has an opening for graduate student research assistant/rotation in the area of dislocation dynamics simulations in the presence of hydrogen. To apply please send an email to Prof. Wei Cai <caiwei@stanford.edu> with a CV.
With the promise of a green hydrogen economy, now more closer to reality than it has even been, the US and Europe have taken lead roles in road-mapping and catalyzing the development of appropriate infrastructure that can support and sustain the promise of hydrogen. To realize the promise of the hydrogen economy, materials issues associated with hydrogen need to be well understood. While the phenomenon of hydrogen embrittlement has been known for a long time, this problem is far from being completely understood and solved. In this project, we will investigate some of the fundamental mechanisms dislocations (the defect responsible for plastic deformations in metals) interact with hydrogen in well-controlled experimental conditions (such as nano-indentation, micro-tensile tests) in collaboration with experimentalists. The research will be performed mostly using the large scale dislocation dynamics (DD) simulation program ParaDiS. Atomistic simulations are also needed to provide material input to DD models.