Alexander Kauffmann

Background

Alex studied Materials Science and Engineering at Dresden University of Technology from Oct. 2004 till Nov. 2009. He is specialised on functional materials and materials science. During his studies he worked as student assistant at IFW Dresden since Sept. 2007. His topics were

• "Herstellen einer ausscheidungsverfestigten Kupfer-Eisen-Legierung durch mechanisches Legieren" (Production of a Precipitation Hardening Copper-Iron Alloy by Mechanical Alloying)

• "Rekristallisationsverhalten von binären Kupfermischkristalllegierungen" (Recrystallisation of Binary Single-Phase Copper Alloys).

In Nov. 2009 Alex successfully defended his diploma thesis on "Eisenpniktidsupraleiter in gepulsten Magnetfeldern bis μ₀H = 50 T" (Iron-Pnictide Superconductors in Pulsed High Magnetic Fields up to μ₀H = 50 T).

His scientific publications can be tracked using his ResearcherID: A-8513-2011.

General Topic

The deformation mechanism in copper-based materials can be changed by controlling parameters like stacking fault energy or temperature during deformation. By analysing the impact of these parameters and the conditions of deformation we investigate how this interplay of dislocation and twinning mediated plasticity can be used to establish unique microstructures.

Keywords: deformation mechanism, copper, dislocation slip, deformation twinning, low temperature deformation, cryogenic deformation, stacking fault energy, recrystallisation, resistivity measurments, electron backscatter diffraction

Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing

Programming

We use Mathematica and Free Pascal as engines to solve a variety of problems encountering in material science. These are for example off-line drift correction of SEM images, correction of x-ray pole figure measurments for experimental errors, Schmidfactors in arbitrary stress states and many more. The resulting programs are mainly distributed open-source and are available here or on request.

Simulation

The detailed invesitgation of the occurence of specific deformation mechanisms is based on analytical approximations and non-linear finite element analysis. Here we use Marc/Mentat at TU Dresden.

Materials Preparation and Experimental Procedures

For investigating deformation mechanisms in face-centred cubic metals several mechanical tests (tensile, compression, torsion) and metal forming processes (rolling, wire drawing, swaging) are available in our department. The initial material is mainly produced at Institute for Complex Materials by conventional casting procedures.

The deformation process is investigated using our standard characterisation methods:

• optical and electron microscopy including electron backscatter diffraction
• macro- & microhardness
• mechanical testing
• resistivity measurements
• x-ray diffraction