CEMAS’ Fraser earns 2020 TMS-AIME Champion H. Mathewson Award

Hamish Fraser, Ohio Regents Eminent Scholar and professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State, was named a recipient of the 2020 AIME Champion H. Mathewson Award. The honor recognizes a paper that represents the most significant contribution to scientific findings that promote broad engineering application of metallic materials in the award period. 

The AIME (American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers) Champion H. Mathewson Award is presented by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) annually, and is considered a pinnacle career achievement. The award was established to honor Champion H. Mathewson, who was president of AIME in 1943.    

Fraser received the recognition for the significance of his paper, "Understanding the Interdependencies Between Composition, Microstructure, and Continuum Variables and Their Influence on the Fracture Toughness of a/b-Processed Ti-6Al-4V." The paper was co-authored with Peter C. Collins of Iowa State University, Vikas Dixit of Intel Corporation, and Santhosh Koduri of Intel Corporation. Each co-author earned recognition.

Fraser was also awarded the 2019 Henry Marion Howe Medal for his work on the paper.     

“Being recognized in this way by one’s peers is an extraordinary honor such that I am very thankful for this award,” said Fraser, who is also a faculty representative for the Center for Electron Microscopy and Analysis (CEMAS) and serves director of the Center for the Accelerated Maturation of Materials (CAMM). “I would like to recognize the remarkable and essential contributions that my co-awardees made to this work and thank them very much for this. 

“TMS is an outstanding organization that represents and promotes our discipline, materials science and engineering, in a very professional and effective manner,” Fraser continued. “It is important to recognize those in our society who have done so much to bring together those in academia, the national laboratories, and industrial organizations and companies.”

Fracture toughness, as addressed in the award-winning paper, is critical in the design and qualification of engineered components and structures. 

Metallic materials can break unexpectedly when cracks are present, and fracture toughness is the measuring of this behavior. Fracture toughness depends on the material’s composition and microstructure, as well as other material properties operating at the continuum level. The interrelationships between these variables are complex, and in turn, difficult to interpret. 

The paper offers insight into how the microstructure influences the fracture toughness in ductile materials and provides a path for designing new materials. 

Honorees were celebrated for their achievement at the TMS-AIME Awards Ceremony held during the TMS 2020 Annual Meeting & Exhibition, February 23-27, 2020, in San Diego, California.