Batch-wise Improvement in Reduced Design Space using a Holistic Optimization Technique (BIRDSHOT) $1,200,000 First Year- Lead Researcher Raymundo Arroyave
ULTIMATE (Ultrahigh Temperature Impervious Materials Advancing Turbine Efficiency) teams will develop ultrahigh temperature materials for gas turbine use in the aviation and power generation industries. ARPA-E advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too high-risk for private-sector investment. ARPA-E awardees are unique because they are developing entirely new ways for Americans to get, store, and use energy. Increasing the efficiency of power generation and air transportation can only be achieved by increasing the temperature at which generation/propulsion turbines operate. The emerging Refractory High Entropy Alloys (RHEAS) can enable much higher operating temperatures than the state-of-the-art. Identifying the alloys’ chemistry is difficult due to the vastness of the RHEA chemical space, however. BIRDSHOT proposes an interdisciplinary framework combining physics-based modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence as well as high-throughput synthesis and characterization platforms to explore the RHEA space in a parallel fashion. BIRDSHOT aims to discover alloys that can potentially withstand the extreme environments in a gas turbine, retain compatibility with protective coatings, and are amenable to additive manufacturing, resulting in significant energy savings in power generation and transportation.