Johns Hopkins University (JHU) engineers Dimitris Giovanis, assistant research professor, and Somdatta Goswami, assistant professor, both in the Whiting School of Engineering’s Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, have been awarded a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as part of the Intrinsically Tough and Affordable Ceramics Today program, also known as INTACT. The grant supports the development of a new manufacturing method for intrinsically tough ceramics that remain stable at elevated temperatures for use in defense, aerospace, and extreme-environment applications.
The project, titled “Engineering Intrinsic Toughness in Hot-forged Aluminium-doped Boron Carbide,” is led by Washington State University, and also includes researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Iowa State University.
Structural ceramics have the potential to be 10 times stronger than metals, with twice the stiffness and half the density. They’re also capable of withstanding higher temperatures and corrosive environments, but most ceramics become brittle and lose much of their strength in extremely hot temperatures, which prevents them from being used as an alternative to metal or metal alloys.
“As a class of materials, ceramics typically outperform alloys and have incredible potential, but their brittleness has always been a barrier. In real-world scenarios—like ballistic impacts or sustained heat—failure can mean the difference between safety and disaster,” said Giovanis, JHU’s principal investigator.
Giovanis and Goswami are working to develop a set of predictive tools using physics-based machine learning that will optimize the design of a new fabrication method to produce ceramics that are tough, heat-resistant, and flexible enough to adapt to different materials and shapes. The tools will utilize both experimental and computational data, which captures the physical movement of atoms and molecules, to explore how the processing parameters affect the behavior of the material.
The team’s methodology is based on a flexible manufacturing process that combines:
- Adaptive materials manufacturing using reaction sintering—fusing materials through a chemical reaction—and hot forging—heating a material to easily reshape it.
- Characterization of properties and failure mechanisms.
- Computational simulations of structural defects and toughening mechanisms at the atomic and molecular levels
- Predictive modeling through physics-based machine learning to optimize the fabrication process.
“Our study focuses on boron carbide, a strong but brittle material that has been extensively investigated due to its applications as a lightweight, protective material against ballistic impacts. We aim to improve the toughness of boron carbide by nearly 10 times while keeping its strength,” said Giovanis.
“We’re not just making ceramics harder—we’re making them significantly tougher from the inside out, at the atomic and crystalline level,” said Goswami.
Beyond defense and aerospace, Giovanis and Goswami see many possibilities for stronger, lighter, and more heat-resistant ceramics, like improving vehicle safety and energy efficiency. For example, strengthened ceramics could replace heavier metals in vehicles and aircraft, improving fuel efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.
“Ultimately, our goal is to deliver a reliable method to produce heat-resistant ceramics for defense applications and extreme environments, but this technology will also have the potential to improve sustainability in the industries that shape our day-to-day world,” said Giovanis.