Expertise and project

• Fracture and fatigue of materials
• Functionally graded materials
• Design of materials through additive manufacturing  
• Additively manufactured smart materials
• High and low temperature mechanical properties
• Microstructure-damage evolution
• Hydrogen Embrittlement and degradation 

Selection of ongoing projects:

1. HiTMat 2020, Enabling the Energy and Environmental Transition through Multi Material Design and Additive Manufacturing, PI
2. Materialen NL: Challenges, Designing hydrogen-resistant alloys through novel multi-scale modelling and experimentation (De-Hy), 1 M€, Co-PI. 2020 – 2023
3. Grant “35th cycle” with Politecnico di Milano, Research area: Design of novel alloys for additive manufacturing processes; 2020 – 2024
4. H2020: Application of Functionally Graded Materials to Extra-Large Structures (Grade2XL), 2020-2024 
5. RSF grant, aimed to design microstructures and tailor mechanical properties in metallic 3D-printed components, PI, 1.7 M€, 2019-2022.
6. European Space Agency (ESA), Ariadna grant, Additive manufacturing of functionally graded ceramics with in-space resources, PI: 30 k€, 2019-2020
7. NWO, TTW-HTM grant, Materials Toughness design through microstructural control, PI and project leader: 750 k€; 2018 – 2022.
8. NWO, TTW HTSM grant, Material Science and Synthesis of Extreme Positioning Flexures, 785 k€, co-promoter.
9. 3mE cohesion project, Development of next generation gas turbines: transitioning to a green hydrogen economy, Co-PI: 60 k€, 2019-2020
   

Our team

Technical staff (2)

• Dr. Ton Riemslag, support in mechanical behaviour lab.
• Elise Reinton, support in mechanical behaviour lab and table-top SEM.

PhD researchers (10)

• Zhaorui Yan, Additive manufacturing of lattice Nitinol structures with tailorable damping properties (together with MT&T), 2021 – present 
• José Galán Argumedo, Application of Functionally Graded Materials to Extra-Large Structures (Grade2XL), H2020 project, 2020 - present
• Arjun Sood, Application of Functionally Graded Materials to Extra-Large Structures (Grade2XL), H2020 project, 2020 - present
• Tim Boot, Designing hydrogen-resistant alloys through novel multi-scale modeling and experimentation (De-Hy), 2020 - present
• Ivan Goncharov, (through PoLiMi) Additive Manufacturing of WC ceramics, 2020 - present
• Jaji Chamakura, Materials Science and Synthesis of Extreme Positioning Flexure, 2019 - present
• Jia-Ning Zhu, Development of 4D Smart Metallic Materials produced by Additive Manufacturing, 2019 - present
• Virginia Bertolo, (Micro-Tough) Materials Toughness design through microstructural control: experimental approach, 2018 - present
• Quanxin Jiang, (Micro-Tough) Materials Toughness design through microstructural control: modelling approach, 2018 - present
• Zhaoying Ding, Tailoring the MoSi2 particle and its self-healing behavior in thermal barrier coatings, 2018 – present

Visiting Researchers

• PhD researcher: Saeede Ghorbanpour, Microstructural Design and Functional Fatigue in 3D-printed Inconel 718, 2020 - present
  
• PhD researcher: Nicolas Macallister, Fatigue of additively manufactured Ti6Al4V, 2022 - present 

Biography

Associate Professor

Since November 2020, Vera Popovich is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), Faculty 3mE at TUDelft. She currently leads the section and laboratory "Mechanical Behavior of Materials" with two main research lines:  

- Fracture and fatigue of complex engineering materials, which is aimed at identifying fundamental mechanisms of fracture (especially in materials under extreme conditions), understanding damage evolution and providing a link to the microstructures.

- Mechanical behavior of additively manufactured (AM) materials, which is focused on understanding and control of microstructure and mechanical behavior of additively manufactured materials, as well as development of multifunctional materials through microstructural design and functional grading enabled by 3D-printing process.

In 2019, Vera was awarded a prestigious RSF 1.7 million euro grant to design microstructures and tailor mechanical properties in 3D-printed components aimed at development of an innovative concept for the creation of 4D metallic ma­terials (4D-SMART).

Vera Popovich received two master degrees in materials science from Far Eastern National Technical University (Russia) and Hamburg-Harburg Technical University (Germany).  Vera obtained her PhD degree from TUDelft in 2013 and subsequently joined Materials Innovation Institute (M2i) as a post-doctoral researcher for 3 years.  In 2016 she started as an Assistant professor at TUDelft and in 2020 she was promoted to an Associate Professor. Her research interests extended towards fracture micromechanics and its relation to microstructural features and stress/strain fields of various metallic and non-metallic materials manufactured by conventional and 3D-printing processes.

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