Computational Materials Science for In-Space Welding, Joining, and Additive Manufacturing

About the NASA Postdoctoral Program

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA’s missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology.

Description:

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is advancing welding, joining, and additive manufacturing (AM) processes for in-space environments that will build structures and space craft components in Earth orbit, Lunar orbit, the Lunar surface, and beyond.  The approach will infuse Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) tools that link the physics and length scales of process modeling, metallurgical modeling, and atomistic techniques into these in-space domains.  These tools will be calibrated in parallel with experimental data and materials diagnostics.  Areas of interest include the following: Novel materials and modified (existing) materials; materials predictive modeling via CALculation of Phase Diagrams (CALPHAD) for phase stability, Kampmann-Wagner Numerical (KWN) for precipitation, atomistic Density Functional Theory (DFT) and Molecular Dynamics (MD) approaches, solidification modeling via Phase Field (PF) and other techniques suitable to equilibrium and far-from-equilibrium conditions, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Finite Element Analysis (FEA), and also integration via Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML) approaches.  This ICME scheme will evaluate the effects of microgravity, reduced pressures down to vacuum, and extreme temperatures & thermal cycles associated with in-space environments on the melting, solidification, and subsequent mechanical behavior of materials subject to processing.

The Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) group at MSFC and the MSFC Materials and Processes Laboratory (EM) are seeking a postdoctoral scholar to develop and apply their expertise to the ICME workflow for in-space applications. The postdoc will apply models in order to innovate novel and existing processes and alloys for in-space welding, joining, and AM.  These efforts will closely align with existing and planned International Space Station, parabolic flight, and drop tower experiments for validation of such models.  MSFC is well-equipped with computational tools & resources and materials diagnostic tools; it has a long history of performing microgravity materials science experiments in collaboration with academic and external partners.  These ICME investigations will identify existing shortcomings in the physical understanding of the boundary conditions needed for computational modeling of in-space welding, joining, and AM processes and will develop new physics-based modeling approaches to advance the state-of-the-art beyond such obstacles.

Field of Science: Interdisciplinary 

Advisors:

Questions about this opportunity? Please email npp@orau.org