Minh-Son (Son) Pham1
Imperial College London1
Architected materials are lightweight with high specific strength and excellent energy absorption, holding great promise for a range of structural applications. However, the absolute strength of such materials is low due to the removal of base material, making them unsuitable for safety-critical applications in automobiles, aerospace and space. We recently developed a new approach in which the crystalline microstructure is mimicked to bring key metallurgical strengthening mechanisms to mesostructure scales, creating artificial crystals (i.e. meta-crystals) with new strengthening sources. This presentation will discuss a new horizon in which we synergistically combine the crystal-like architecture and metallurgical engineering (via heat treatments) to significantly push the strength and toughness of metallic meta-crystal for load-bearing and safety critical applications. The talk also discusses new ways of tuning mechanical behaviour to specific locations to enhance the spatial programming of local deformation.