-------------------------------------------------------------------- COLLOQUIUM OF THE LABORATORY FOR COMPUTER DESIGN OF MATERIALS School of Computational Sciences (CSI 898-Sec 001) -------------------------------------------------------------------- The environment-sensitive mechanical behavior of solids Igor Vidensky Catholic University of America, Washington, DC This talk gives an overview of the environment effect on mechanical behavior of solids. Mechanical properties of solids are often affected by active surrounding media, which can facilitate fracture or plastic deformation of the material. As a rule, only relatively weak or moderate effects of media find industrial applications, such as lubrication in friction and wear (e.g. rock drilling using solutions of surfactants) and mechanical treatment of metals under electrical polarization. Strongly active media usually act as negative environments, and much effort is devoted to understanding and preventing their harmful influence. However, it has been shown that such a strongly negative effect as the liquid metal embrittlement (LME) can be used for processing extremely hard alloys. Broad applications of this phenomenon are hampered by technical difficulties in obtaining the perfect wetting, providing a reliable contact with the melt, removing its residual films or traces, etc. We introduce a principally new method in this field, which we call the Electro-Chemo-Mechanical Treatment (ECMT) method. It uses the LME in the absence of the liquid metal phase, namely, in an electrochemical cell in the course of a cathode reduction of ions of a selected surface-active metal at the surface of the tested sample. The underlying idea of this method is explained and potential applications are outlined. Monday , April 16, 2001 4:30 pm Room 206, Science & Tech. I Refreshments will be served at 4:15 PM. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Find the schedule at http://csi.gmu.edu/lcdm/seminar/schedule.html