Materials Mechanics group is involved in evaluation and assessment of load bearing engineering components and provide substantial input to designers, alloy development and failure analysis professionals. Evaluation and assessment of load bearing engineering components assume significance in view of the growing need for techno-economical design and enhanced safety norms. Major research areas of the group involve creep/fatigue deformation behavio ur of structural alloys, fracture analysis, non destructive evaluation, failure analysis and prevention, remaining life assessment.
Materials Mechanics group is involved in creep research for near to four decades. The central creep research facility was established at NML in 1973-74 with a vision to indigenously characterize the high temperature materials used in the country. The creep bay at present houses 55 single creep test points (with max. temp. 900oC), 11 multi point machines (with max. temp. 900oC), 9 single point creep test points (with max. temp. 1000oC). In the last four decades, with the help of the present fleet of machines, NML has established its credentials as a forerunner in research related to high temperature material evaluation.
The Materials Mechanics group is involved in fatigue evaluation of structural alloys of national mission mode project such as Advanced Ultra Supercritical (A-USC) boilers, Kaveri engine project of DRDO, projects sponsored by BRNS/BARC, Indian Railways and Oil/Gas sectors. Research areas involve high temperature low and high cycle fatigue (LCF and HCF), Multi axial fatigue, fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR) studies. Corrosion fatigue crack growth behaviour of ship building materials, hot corrosion fatigue interaction in aero engine material. The research emphasis in the area of fracture mechanics is on development of tools/protocols that are required for applying fracture mechanics based studies, development of location independent crack length relations for various specimen geometries, study on paths of part through cracks, evaluation of ductile fracture resistance of the piping materials (J-R curve).
