Visiting Scholar (Alumnus)

Aluminum alloys

Email: p_okle@yahoo.de

Address: 2220 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208

B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

I received my B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, in 2011. After an internship at the pre-development department at Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG I continued studying at KIT where I am currently graduating in Materials Science and Engineering. During that time I took advantage of several research opportunities, i.e. the tribological aspects of ceramics, mainly silicon nitride, the mechanical behavior of materials and computational materials science (with a term paper using 3D discrete dislocation dynamics to understand strain bursts in thin metal films).

My research at Northwestern University for my master’s thesis focuses on precipitation strengthened Aluminum-Scandium-X-Y alloys for high temperature applications. To characterize the microstructure of the alloys I will use Atom-Probe-Tomography as well as creep testing. The aluminum alloys are promising candidates to partly replace steels and titanium in high-temperature regimes to obtain better efficiency.