Description

This postdoctoral fellowship opportunity at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) focuses on applying statistical physics to understand the deformation of metals. The research centers on the complex interactions of mobile and immobile dislocations—line defects within metals—that govern mechanical properties during plastic deformation. Despite the complexity, mechanical behavior can be modeled using a few statistical internal state variables related to dislocation segment length distributions in cell walls.

The model uses only fundamental physical inputs such as the Burgers vector and elastic shear modulus, without adjustable parameters, to accurately predict phenomena including slip line and slip band formation, stress-strain curve behavior (both linear and nonlinear), and flow stress magnitude. Extensions of this model may explore alloy and polycrystal behavior, temperature effects, and experimentally observed local stress fluctuations.

The program encourages both theoretical and modeling approaches to advance understanding in this area.

Keywords

Chaos, Complex systems, Dislocations, Multiscale modeling, Percolation theory, Statistical physics