Thevika Balakumar
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| Full name | Thevika Balakumar |
Project Summary
The current need for higher fuel efficient vehicles in the transportation industry increases the demand for magnesium alloys due to their light weight property. However, the use of magnesium alloys has been limited due to their poor creep resistance. Hence, new magnesium alloys are needed to meet the automobile and aerospace requirements for elevated temperature strength.
To enable better understanding of an alloy system, it is essential to construct the phase diagram of this particular system. However, constructing phase diagrams by experimental work is time consuming. In spite of this, in recent years, the development of solution models, numerical methods and computer software has permitted a quantitative application of thermodynamics to phase diagram analysis. This technique of analysis implies carrying out a simultaneous evaluation of available phase diagram measurements and available thermodynamic data to obtain optimized set of parameters for Gibbs energy equations of each phase.
It is known that the addition of antimony improves the creep resistance of magnesium alloys. Hence, this project is focused on thermodynamic modeling of Mg-Al-Sb alloy system.
Thesis
Publications
[1] T. Balakumar and M. Medraj, “Thermodynamic Modeling of the Mg-Al-Sb System", CALPHAD (Computer Coupling of Phase Diagrams and Thermochemistry), Vol. 29, Issue 1, 24–36 (2005).
