The objective of this project is to investigate the formation energies, mobilities, and stability of defects and defect clusters under different mechanical and thermal loading conditions in the hopes of answering questions about the fundamental failure mechanisms of high carbon content steels failing under the fatigue limit under very high cycle rolling contact fatigue. It has been hypothesized such very high cycle fatigue could be attributed to dislocation climb, and, as such, it is important to obtain information about defect properties and their contribution to iron transport in the ferritic lattice. A combination of computational methods, such as density functional theory and molecular dynamics, is used to investigate the static and dynamic properties and influence on mechanical properties of the aforementioned defects across different length scales and time scales.

The project is funded by SKF Global and is indirectly supported (via a portable DoD fellowship) by the Office of Naval Research.