The research in my group is primarily in the area of mechanics of materials. Our focus is on the combined experimental characterization and computational analysis of mechanical properties, stresses, and microstructures of engineering materials and their roles in advancing manufacturing and materials processing technologies and in various engineering design and long-term service applications.

Mechanics of Small-Scale Structures and Small-Volume Materials

-Mesoscale grain deformation and interaction in multicrystals and polycrystals

-Deformation and failure of laser, spot, and friction stir welded sheet metal joints
-Fracture, delamination, and buckling of thin film coatings
-Mechanical properties and stresses in metallic thin films and polymer membranes

-Thermal-mechanical responses of microelectronic packaging at multiple length scales
-Necking failure and crack growth in thin sheets (cohesive fracture law)
-Nanoindentation and microindentation of crystals

 

Plastic Flows of Heterogeneous Crystalline Solids

-Unstable plastic flow behaviors (Portevin-Le Chatelier effects) in metal alloys
-Phase transformation plasticity and fracture/fatigue of NiTi shape memory alloys
-Anisotropic plasticity modeling of nonlinear heterogeneous polycrystals
-Sheet metal forming (surface roughening, forming limits, earing)
-Hot deformation and failure of aluminum alloys (void growth)
-Mechanical response of materials under high-strain-rate loadings
-Shock consolidation and processing of porous particulate materials

 

Experimental Mechanics/Micromechanics of Materials

-2D surface deformation mapping by image correlation (examples to come)
-3D surface deformation mapping by image correlation (examples to come)
-Calibration and evaluation of digital imaging systems for 2D/3D applications
-Stress measurements by X-ray and electron diffraction and Raman spectroscopy
-Experimental micromechanics using various microscopy techniques (SEM, SPM,
 etc.)

Selected Publications

1.  "Fracture and delamination of thin anodic oxide coatings adhered to a ductile substrate," C. Xie and W. Tong, Acta Mater., 53, 477-485 (2005).

2.  "Modeling the rotation of orthotropic axes of sheet metals subjected to off-axis uniaxial tension,"  W. Tong, H. Tao, and X. Jiang,  ASME Trans. J. Appl. Mech., 71(4), 521-531 (2004).

3.  "An experimental study on grain deformation and interactions in a binary aluminum alloy," N. Zhang, and W. Tong, Int. J. Plasticity, 20, 523-542 (2004).

4.  "Plastic surface strain mapping of bent sheets by image correlation," W. Tong,    Exp. Mech., 44(5), 502-511 (2004).

More publications