Announcements – Multiscale Mechanics & Materials Laboratory

MMM Lab welcomes five new members

September 21, 2022September 21, 2022

The MMM Lab recently welcomed Dr. Krishna Prasath Logakannan, Claire Ticknor, Jake Hirst, Bjorn Johnsson, and Allie Richards. Dr. Krishna Logakannan joins the lab as a postdoctoral researcher after earning his Ph.D. in 2021 at IIT Madras and the India & Swinburne University of Technology. He later moved to Johns Hopkins University where he was a member of the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute prior to joining the MMM Lab at Utah. Claire Ticknor joins the lab as a Ph.D. student. She is originally from Los Alamos, New Mexico, and earned her B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering at the...

Spear Named University Presidential Scholar

September 21, 2022October 4, 2023

The annual award recognizes excellence and achievement for faculty members at the assistant or associate professor level and comes with $10,000 in annual funding for three years to support their scholarship and enrich their research activities. Read more in the full article here: https://attheu.utah.edu/facultystaff/2022-u-presidential-scholars-named/ ...

Congratulations to Dr. Karen DeMille and Carter Cocke!

August 19, 2022August 19, 2022

We are pleased to announce the graduation of MMM Lab members Karen DeMille and Carter Cocke. Karen DeMille successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation entitled Establishment of Representative Volume Elements for Microstructurally Small Cracks Using Numerical Simulation and Machine Learning. In her dissertation, she explores the question: “What is the minimum volume of microstructure needed to accurately capture the fields around a microstructurally small crack?”. Since graduating, she has been working as a Research Mechanical Engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Congratulations, Dr. DeMille! Carter Cocke successfully defended his M.S....

MMM Lab Awarded 1st Place NIST AM-Bench Challenge

August 15, 2022October 4, 2023

The MMM Lab received a first-place award in the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Additive Manufacturing Benchmark Test Series, a competition that enables teams to test their simulations against additive manufacturing benchmark test data. The team included graduate students Carter Cocke, Brian Phung, Laura Ziegler, Elliott Marsden, and Vignesh Babu Rao. In the team’s specific challenge, titled “Subcontinuum Mesoscale Tensile Test,” all the competing teams were given a set of materials characterization data for a small sample of 3D-printed Inconel 625, a type of nickel alloy. They were then asked to make blind predictions of the mechanical (stress-strain)...

Spear joins editorial boards of EFM and FFEMS

June 29, 2022June 29, 2022

Dr. Spear recently joined the editorial boards for two top journals in the field of fracture mechanics. The aims and scope for each journal are described below. Engineering Fracture Mechanics: EFM covers a broad range of topics in fracture mechanics to be of interest and use to both researchers and practitioners. Contributions are welcome which address the fracture behavior of conventional engineering material systems as well as newly emerging material systems. Contributions on developments in the areas of mechanics and materials science strongly related to fracture mechanics are also welcome. Papers on fatigue are welcome if they treat the fatigue...

Congratulations to Dr. Dillon Watring!

October 11, 2021October 11, 2021

Congratulations to MMM Lab member, Dillon Watring, who successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation this year and was awarded a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship from the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct research at the Naval Research Laboratory. Dillon’s dissertation is entitled Multiscale Characterization of Process-Structure-Property Relationships in Additively Manufactured IN718 and can be downloaded here. Congratulations, Dr. Watring! ...

MMM Lab & Collaborators Named Top Performer in National Additive Manufacturing Modeling Challenge

October 19, 2020October 4, 2023

MMM Lab & collaborators were named a Top Performer in a national additive manufacturing modeling challenge hosted by the Air Force Research Laboratory and America Makes. University of Utah mechanical engineering associate Professor Ashley Spear, undergraduate researcher Carter Cocke, Prof. Anthony Rollett from Carnegie Mellon University, and Dr. Ricardo Lebensohn from Los Alamos National Laboratory are a U led team and awardees of the America Makes and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Additive Manufacturing Modeling Challenge Series. The goal of the Challenge Series was to improve the accuracy of model predictions for metal, using INCONEL® nickel-chromium alloy 625 (IN625)....

We are now on twitter!

July 1, 2019July 1, 2019

The MMM Lab now has a twitter account. For the latest updates from our lab, follow us @MMMLabUtah. ...

Spear Receives TMS Early Career Faculty Fellow Award

April 15, 2019April 15, 2019

Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Ashley Spear was recently awarded the Early Career Faculty Fellow Award by TMS (The Minerals, Metals, & Materials Society). The award is given annually to an assistant professor “for his or her accomplishments that have advanced the academic institution where employed, and for abilities to broaden the technological profile of TMS.” To be redirected to the original article, click here....

Congratulations to PhD Candidate, Brian Phung!

January 22, 2019January 22, 2019

MMM Lab member, Brian Phung, successfully defended his PhD proposal on January 7th. He also learned, on the same day, that his first-author paper entitled “A voxel-based remeshing framework for the simulation of arbitrary three-dimensional crack growth in heterogeneous materials” was accepted for publication in the journal Engineering Fracture Mechanics. The paper will soon be available online. Great work, Brian!...