Dr. Yanfei Gao
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Princeton University: Nanoscale Domain Stabilities on Solid Surfaces and Guided Self-Assembly
Brief Bio
Dr. Gao earned his bachelor’s degree with the highest honor in the Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 1999, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, New Jersey, in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Advised by Prof. Zhigang Suo, Dr. Gao’s thesis work identifies and simulates mechanisms of mechanically and/or electrically induced compositional self-assembly at nanoscale, and also investigates how to manipulate the self-organized patterns by symmetry breaking, strain engineering, and guided self-assembly. From March 2003 to July 2005, Dr. Gao worked as a post-doctoral research associate, with Prof. Allan F. Bower and Prof. Kyung-Suk Kim, in the Division of Engineering, Brown University. Supported by the General Motors/Brown Collaborative Research Lab on Computational Materials Research, his work includes multiscale modeling and experiments on surface plasticity and adhesion, microstructural evolution, and structural integrity. Since August 2005, Dr. Gao is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, University of Tennessee, and also holds a joint faculty position at the Computational Materials Science Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His current research interests focus on mechanics modeling of microstructural evolution, crystal plasticity at small length scales, constitutive behavior of amorphous alloys, etc., most of which are motivated from his colleagues’ experiments at UT and ORNL. Dr. Gao has authored or co-authored 20 technical papers, and has been actively involved in participating and organizing professional conferences.
Research Areas
(Click each area for more information!)
- Crystal plasticity at small scales (collaborating with G.M. Pharr, B.C. Larson, E.P. George)
- Novel self-assembly process, e.g., BaZrO3 in YBa2Cu3O7-δ (collaborating with A. Goyal and G.M. Stocks)
- Constitutive behavior of amorphous alloys (collaborating with P.K. Liaw, T.G. Nieh and T. Egami)
Selected Awards and Honors
2006 Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences Fellowship, University of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Laboratory
2005-2007 International Materials Institute Faculty Fellowship, University of Tennessee
1999-2003 Sir Gordon Wu Fellowship, Princeton University
1999 Graduate with the highest honor, Tsinghua Univeristy
1999 Gold Medal in Hammer Throw, the John Ma Campus Games, Tsinghua University
Professional Activities
The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), Member since 2006
Materials Research Society (MRS), Member since 2003
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Member since 2001
Selected Publications
Gao Y.F., Suo Z. (2003). "The orientation of the self-assembled monolayer stripes on a crystalline solid", Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, 51, 147-167.
Gao Y.F., Bower A.F. (2006). "Elastic-plastic contact of a rough surface with Weierstrass profile", Proceeding of Royal Society A462, 319-348.
Gao Y.F. (2006). "An implicit finite element method for simulating inhomogeneous deformation and shear bands of amorphous alloys based on the free-volume model", Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering 14, 1329-1345.
Gao Y.F., Yang B., Nieh T.G. (2007). "Thermomechanical instability analysis of inhomogeneous deformation in amorphous alloys", Acta Materialia 55, 2319-2327.
Gao Y.F., Xu H.T., Oliver W.C., Pharr G.M. (2007). "Effective elastic modulus of film-on-substrate systems under normal and tangential contact", Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, in press.
Contact Dr. Gao
323B Dougherty Engineering Building
Department of Materials Sciece and Engineering
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-2200
Tel: (865) 974-2350
Email: ygao7@utk.edu
5700-F223, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6164
Tel: (865) 574-2537
Email: gaoy@ornl.gov
