The Center for Advanced Non-Ferrous Structural Alloys (CANFSA) at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) consists of students, post-docs and faculty who work with their CANFSA counterparts at Iowa State University (ISU) to engage with scientists and engineers from both industry and government laboratories in research on the fundamentals of the physical and mechanical metallurgy of non-ferrous alloys (i.e., alloying and processing effects on microstructure, properties and performance). The motivation for CANFSA is to address the national decline in the training of students in this area that is critical to U.S. dominance in high performance materials, structures and advanced manufacturing. Today, there are only a few universities remaining who train students in these core science and engineering areas that are so critical to our industries, especially as National investments are made in new advanced materials and manufacturing strategies. In fact, these declines have greatly reduced; the synergies that existed previously between faculty, students, and the relevant industries, and this, in turn, significantly weakened the technical dominance of US industries that rely heavily  on these materials. CANFSA was organized to counter this trend by conducting fundamental scientific studies on these advanced materials and their manufacturing, thereby filling this critical workforce development gap and simultaneously contributing to U.S. global industrial competitiveness.

The objective of CANFSA is to conduct critical basic and applied physical metallurgy;research of direct relevance to the industries that develop, manufacture and use advanced  non-ferrous structural alloys, and to train students in these important subjects. This is accomplished by engaging students in topics of importance to industry and government labs, and to have both faculty members and external mentors guide the students' fundamental research. The specific details of the projects that are conducted within the Center vary as topics are selected that have the most direct relevance for the partners from industry and the national laboratories. To date, the Center has conducted leading research in the areas of: thermal and mechanical processing of non-ferrous alloys (e.g., 3rd Generation Al-Li alloys, texture anisotropy of Ti-6Al-4V); ultrafine grained alloys and their mechanical behavior (e.g., Ti and Mg); aging of high-strength beta-Ti alloys; processing of microeutectic Al alloys; microstructural evolution (e.g., Ni-Ti-Hf intermetallics, Ni-based superalloys, high entropy alloys); multi-layer coatings; lube-free die casting; and the role of trace elements and small microstructural variations on mechanical properties. To conduct these varied research projects and accomplish the goals of the Center, faculty members with complementary ;expertise in the areas of theory, modeling, processing and characterization are working together with members from industry and government laboratories. Mines has a variety of state-of-the-art processing and characterization tools that students, post-docs, and faculty use to address complex, yet precompetitive, projects that are of interest to a number of the our member companies. The expertise at Mines is complementary to that at ISU and, collectively, CANFSA is able to offer unique capabilities to its membership.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships (IIP)
Application #
1624836
Program Officer
Prakash Balan
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2016-07-15
Budget End
2022-06-30
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2016
Total Cost
$854,990
Indirect Cost
Name
Colorado School of Mines
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Golden
State
CO
Country
United States
Zip Code
80401