Computational Materials Science In-Space Welding, Joining, and Additive Manufacturing

NASA Postdoctoral Program

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one‑to‑three‑year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA’s missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology.

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is advancing welding, joining, and additive manufacturing (AM) processes for in‑space environments that will build structures and spacecraft components in Earth orbit, Lunar orbit, the Lunar surface, and beyond. The approach will infuse Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) tools that link the physics and length scales of process modeling, metallurgical modeling, and atomistic techniques into these in‑space domains.

The ICME scheme will evaluate the effects of microgravity, reduced pressures down to vacuum, and extreme temperatures & thermal cycles associated with in‑space environments on the melting, solidification, and subsequent mechanical behavior of materials subject to processing.

The Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS) group at MSFC and the MSFC Materials and Processes Laboratory (EM) are seeking a postdoctoral scholar to develop and apply their expertise to the ICME workflow for in‑space applications. The postdoc will apply models in order to innovate novel and existing processes and alloys for in‑space welding, joining, and AM.

Interdisciplinary

• Jeffrey Sowards – j.sowards
• Fredrick Michael – f.michael

Experience with computational materials science and fluid dynamics methods and techniques highly desired. While an applicant need not have experience in all of these, relevant methods may include but are not limited to density functional theory, molecular dynamics, CALPHAD, phase field modeling, cellular automata, lattice Boltzmann, volume of fluid, and finite element. Experience with high‑performance computing platforms, including parallelization and Unix environments, desired.

• Citizenship: U.S. Citizen Only
• Degree:
  Doctoral Degree.

Point of Contact:
Mikeala