Waqas Muhammad

Education:

• BASc, University of Waterloo, Canada
• MASc, University of Waterloo, Canada
• PhD, University of Waterloo, Canada

Research interests:

• Failure and Fracture of Materials
• Experimental Characterization
• Microstructure and Texture
• Large Plastic Deformations
• Cyclic Plasticity
• Multi-scale Modeling
• Micromechanics and Homogenization
• Phenomenological and Crystal Plasticity Modeling

Summary of work:

The automotive industry is focusing on the use of lightweight materials such as Aluminum and Magnesium alloys in an effort to lower the fuel consumption and reduce harmful carbon emissions. An important step in new material development and design of automotive parts, is to perform finite element (FE) simulations to generate optimized designs exhibiting superior crashworthiness and forming behavior.

In this regard, an accurate prediction of the post necking and fracture behavior of the material is essential for optimizing the impact performance and formability of designed parts. As of now, localization, damage and fracture phenomena are not well understood for precipitation hardened aluminum alloys.

The goal of my research is to study the localization, damage and fracture behavior of 6000 series aluminum alloys through a well-designed experimentation process, with emphasis on developing a physically motivated crystal plasticity-based fracture model applicable to precipitation hardening aluminum alloys.

Waqas Muhammad's Google Scholar