Postdoctoral Research in High Temperature Mechanical Behavior of Additively Manufactured Superalloys for Turbine Applications

The National Energy Technology Laboratory's (NETL's) record of success has been built on understanding the future of energy and the technologies required to make that future possible. We’ve long touted our success in developing the technologies that took on acid rain in the 1970s and mercury in the early 2000s.

Program Goals

The NETL Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program (Postdoc) is a high-intensity program designed to identify recent Doctoral graduates of high promise and to foster advanced skill development. It allows the postdoc to systematically outline career goals and helps provide the means of achieving these goals. NETL principal investigators and leads serve as mentors to postdoctoral participants during the program. This interaction affords the postdoc a unique opportunity to develop critical skills needed to become an independent professional.

The program goals include providing the opportunity to participants to:

• Develop skills and knowledge in their field of study
• Engage with new areas of basic and applied research
• Network with world-class scientists
• Exchange ideas and skills with the Laboratory community
• Use state-of-the-art equipment
• Contribute to answers for today's pressing scientific questions
• Collaborate with the broader scientific and technical communities

Project Details

Through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), this posting seeks a post-Doctoral researcher to engage in projects with the Research Innovation Center (RIC) at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in the area of Advanced Turbines under the mentorship of Chantal Sudbrack. This project will be hosted at the NETL Albany, OR campus.

Additive manufacturing, particularly laser powder-bed fusion, shows great promise in fabricating high-temperature load-bearing parts with complex geometries for turbomachinery used in land-based power generation. However, the deployment of L-PBF turbine components is inhibited by an insufficient understanding of the microstructure materials response, damage progression, and component lifetime and reliability. This project shall focus on the thermal fatigue and environmentally assisted failure of L-PBF Ni-based superalloys in service as it relates to processing, part geometry, and performance requirements. The project shall support advancing scientific understanding of competing effects associated with the mechanical and environmental damage by combining experiments and lifing models to predict crack initiation and propagation.

The candidate shall use established techniques to test and model materials related results on the fatigue behavior in air and under environments. The candidate shall conduct research independently, establish subject matter expertise in project area, integrate rapidly in the laboratory, participate and present at team meetings, write technical articles on research results, and present to internal and external audiences, including at international conferences. The candidate shall become familiar with additively manufacturing processing, gas turbine technology, component requirements, and application driven research. The research is well supported by on-site testing, characterization, and computational facilities.

Stipend: The selected participant will receive a monthly stipend commensurate with educational level and experience.

• Post-Doctoral stipend is $8031 per month.

Deliverables: To document the effectiveness of the program, participants are required to submit a pre-appointment and post-appointment survey, as well as a reflection on their appointment experience when they renew or end their appointment. The reflection should summarize their project(s), additional activities, and overall experience. Details are provided as the appointment end date approaches.
Participants may also have the opportunity to contribute to manuscripts, journal articles, book chapters, conference presentations, posters, patents, and other publications as a part of their appointment. Such achievements should also be reported to ORISE; additional details are provided after an offer has been accepted.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory system, is owned and operated by the DOE. NETL supports the DOE mission to advance the energy security of the United States. This is an educational opportunity offered by NETL and administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Participants in the program are not considered employees of NETL, DOE, the program administrator, or any other office or agency.

Qualifications

To be eligible, you must either:

• have received a Doctoral degree within the last five years or be currently enrolled in a Doctoral degree program and complete the degree prior to the appointment start date.

The ideal candidate would have some, but not necessarily all, of the following:

• Experience with fatigue testing, fractographic failure analysis, and lifing models to predict crack nucleation and propagation
• Experience with microstructural characterization of high temperature alloy using SEM, EDS and EBSD
• Demonstrated record of advancing research projects through careful data analysis and evaluation of microstructure-structure-property relationships
• Good communication skills as evidenced by authoring high-quality articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals