Los Alamos a member of DOE’s new lightweight manufacturing consortium

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Figure 5. Web page for the LightMAT Consortium

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Los Alamos National Laboratory is one of nine members of the new Lightweight Materials Consortium (LightMAT), which is designed to streamline the process for connecting industry with expertise and equipment found only at the DOE national labs. By providing access to national labs’ materials capabilities, LightMAT aims to give U.S. manufacturing a competitive edge through materials that can be developed and deployed at considerable savings in cost and time.

DOE established LightMat as part of the Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative in the Energy Materials Network. Accelerating advanced materials development, from discovery through deployment, could revolutionize whole industries and is critical for the U.S. to compete globally in manufacturing in the 21st century. However, today only a small fraction of materials innovations make it to widespread commercialization. The DOE Energy Manufacturing Network aims to dramatically decrease the time-to-market for advanced materials that are critical to manufacturing many clean energy technologies, enabling manufacturers to develop and deliver innovative, made-in-America products to the world market. DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office, part of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, sponsors LightMat. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory manages the consortium.

Ellen Cerreta [Materials Science in Radiation and Dynamics Extremes (MST-8) group leader] is a member of the LightMAT Steering Committee. The resource network includes Ames Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, LANL, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. It is composed of member teams who are experts in technical capabilities, technology transfer/agreements, and data.

As one of its first endeavors, the consortium has created the website https://lightmat.org/, where industrial researchers can search for capabilities in processing and manufacturing, computational tools, and materials characterization relevant to lightweight materials development and use—by category or national lab.

The LightMAT website provides detailed descriptions and experts to contact for the following Los Alamos capabilities:

• Bulk fabrication of damage-tolerant layered nanocomposites (Nate Mara, Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, MPA-CINT, and Metallurgy, MST-6)
• Microstructure-based forming simulation tools for face-centered cubic and hexagonal close-packed metals and alloys (Ricardo Lebensohn and Carlos Tomé, MST-8; Irene Beyerlein, Fluid Dynamics and Solid Mechanics, T-3)
• Multiscale process modeling of bulk nanolaminates (Irene Beyerlein)
• Nanoscale in situ mechanical testing stage (Nan Li and Nate Mara, MPA-CINT)
• Multiscale experiments and modeling of metal alloy solidification dynamics (Amy Clarke, MST-6)
• Constitutive strength modeling (Rusty Gray, MST-8)
• Advanced high strength steel development (Kester Clarke, MST-6)
• In situ characterization of processing (Amy Clarke)
• Dynamic performance (Rusty Gray)

The work supports the Laboratory’s mission areas through LANL’s Materials for the Future science pillar. Technical contact: Ellen Cerreta