August 2009 – Touchstone Receives DoD Award for Development of Corrosion-Resistant Naval Alloys Through Innovative Multi-Scale Computational Modeling and Simulation Tools

The objective of this study is to evolve an aluminum alloy (7xxx series) with superior corrosion resistance and mechanical properties making use of computational tools. The methodology of this approach is to obtain corrosion data from the literature as input data and then to perform optimization trials making use of the multi-objective hybrid evolutionary optimization software packages and response surface methodologies.  This software has the proven capability to deal with various alloy design applications using minimal experimental data. The computational trials will yield optimal alloy composition for the best combination of corrosion resistance and mechanical properties, simultaneously.

This evolutionary optimization approach minimizes the effort needed for alloy design by avoiding a large volume of experimentation, characteristic of conventional alloy development, and guarantees the mathematically best possible solutions. The results of optimization will be experimentally validated by processing an alloy of predicted composition and evaluating its corrosion resistance and mechanical properties.  Touchstone is partnering with Florida International University for this study.

For nearly two decades, and with over 900 individual projects completed to date, Touchstone has been conducting aluminum alloy research, testing, failure analysis and supporting commercial product development in the aerospace, automotive and other industries.

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