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From Shape Memory Alloys to Piezoelectrics: the New World of Advanced Engineering Materials

The various materials that engineers use to build components for everyday objects, such as cars and airplanes, are complex, heterogeneous collections of crystals or grains. The nature of these materials has profound implications for how they behave under stress produced during their production history and subsequent in-service life. Historically, however, engineers have generally ignored how the fundamental structure of the materials affects their behaviour under stress and instead only estimated their response.

Canada Research Chair Dr. Mark Daymond studies the irregularities of engineering materials at the microscopic crystal level. Irregularities at this level can cause material deformation and failure, which in turn can lead to life-threatening situations such as the crash of an airplane.

Dr. Daymond studies the behaviour of a wide variety of materials including non-conventional "smart" materials, such as the shape memory alloys that are responsible for ultra-bendable eye-glass frames, and piezoelectrics, the materials that produce an electric signal in response to pressure and which are only now entering mainstream structural engineering design. He recognizes that there is also much to learn about the behaviour of materials considered more conventional – such as steel and nickel – as we manipulate their structure at the nanometre (one millionth of a millimetre) scale.

Dr. Daymond's research is having an impact both on the fundamental understanding of the material deformation itself and on the development of practical engineering techniques, new materials, and component design.