The National Science Foundation awarded Prof. Hildreth a prestigious early CAREER award. The award, titled: CAREER: Understanding Sensitization and Corrosion Mechanisms in Additively Manufactured Metals for Improved Surface Finish, Mechanical Properties and Corrosion Resistance, seeks to understand how the microstructure of powder-bed fusion-processed metals and alloys control sensitization kinetics and corrosion mechanisms. To achieve this understanding, the research objectives of this project are to: (1) understand microstructure evolution during sensitization; (2) understand how the depth-dependent sensitized microstructure changes the corrosion behavior and associated self-terminating etch-stop mechanism; and (3) quantify the impacts that sensitization and dissolution have on mechanical properties and corrosion performance.
