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John Morral
Professor
Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1969
Tel. (614) 247-4691
Office: 292 Watts Hall
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John Morral received B. Met. E and M.S. degrees in 1964 and 1965 from The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in 1969 from M.I.T. After three years at the University of Illinois, he moved to the University of Connecticut where, in 2003, he completed a five year term as Department Head of their Metallurgy and Materials Engineering Department.
For the past thirty years he has taught courses on physical metallurgy, thermodynamics, diffusion, and phase diagrams. His major research interest is diffusional kinetics with applications to high temperature coatings, gas-solid reactions and the heat treatment of alloys.
Research interests
Over the past two decades both fundamental theory and theory based models that relate to multicomponent, multiphase diffusion have been developed. The results can be applied to measuring ternary and higher order diffusivities and eliminating Kirkendall porosity. Also, the work has shown that diffusion paths in multiphase regions can have a zigzag shape, contain singularities, and pass through special composition points.
The principles have been applied to a number of topics. Examples are internal oxidation, precipitate coarsening, the interdiffusion of high temperature coatings (see the figures below), and the solutionizing of alloys. Currently work continues with students, Professor Yunzhi Wang, and Dr. Ximiao Pan on applying the phase field method to modeling diffusion in multiphase alloys during both heat treatment and radiation damage.
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| Fig.1. DICTRA simulation of the diffusion path in a Ni-Cr-Al couple. | Fig.2. Measured diffusion path for a diffusion couple similar to Fig. 1. |
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| Fig.3. Interdiffusion microstucture of the Ni-Cr-Al diffusion couple described in Fig. 2. The dark areas in the gamma layer are Kirkendall porosity. | |
