PHYSICAL MATHEMATICS SEMINAR



TITLE:		METASTABILITY AND MICROSTRUCTURE 
		IN STRUCTURAL PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS


SPEAKER:	MITCHELL LUSKIN
		SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS
		UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA


ABSTRACT: 

Martensitic crystals undergo a first order structural phase transformation between a high 
symmetry crystalline phase and several variants of a low symmetry crystalline phase 
(such as the cubic to orthorhombic transformation in some CuAlNi alloys). These crystals
are observed to be in metastable states exhibiting a fine-scale spatial oscillation between 
the variants of the low symmetry phase, and hysteresis is observed as the temperature or 
boundary loads are varied. We will present computational methods and a numerical analysis
for this microstructure, and we will discuss several multistage methods and the different 
metastable states that they compute.


TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 2003  
2:30 pm
Building 2, Room 338

Refreshments will be served at 3:30 PM in Room 2-349

                   

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Mathematics
Cambridge, MA  02139