CX-017936: Purdue University -- Bio-enabled Lightweight Metallic Structures with Ultrahigh Specific Strengths for Reduced Weight, Energy Use, and Emissions

Funding will support the project team's small-scale research and development activities to develop new bio-inspired ultra-lightweight structural materials designed to enable reductions in weight, energy use, and emissions in the transportation industries. Specifically, the project team will (1) model, synthesize, and characterize low-density Titanium bio-inspired structures to determine the structure with the highest specific strength; (2) develop scaling laws for predicting the strengths of macroscale, hierarchical titanium structures; and (3) design a bio-inspired scalable titanium structures that meets the strength and density requirements.