Dr. George M. Pharr

McKamey Professor, MSE Department Head, and UT-ORNL Joint Faculty

Ph.D., Stanford (1979): Nanoindentation, small-scale mechanical behavior, mechanisms of deformation and fracture in solids

 

Brief Bio

George M. Pharr received his BS in Mechanical Engineering at Rice University in 1975 and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford in 1979. After one year of postdoctoral study at the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge, England, he returned to Rice in 1980 as a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. During a sabbatical leave in 1987-88, he worked with the Ceramic Sciences Group at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. He moved to his current joint position at UT/ORNL in 1998 and has been head of the UT Materials Science and Engineering Department since 2006. He received ASM International’s Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers of Metallurgy in 1985 and was elected a Fellow of ASM International in 1995. His honors also include the Amoco Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University in 1995 and the University of Tennessee Chancellor's Award for Research and Creative Achievement in 2004.   He has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society since 1990 and served as Volume Organizer for the MRS Bulletin in 2000. He has chaired or co-chaired many large professional society meetings including the 1995 Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society in San Francisco  and the 2000 Gordon Research Conference on Thin Film Mechanical Behavior, which he co-founded in 1998. He is an author or co-author of more than 180 scientific publications, including 4 book chapters, and a Thomson ISI "Highly Cited Researcher in Materials Science". His research focuses on nanoindentation and small-scale mechanical behavior of materials.

Research Areas

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» Nanoindentation and nanomechanical testing
» Thin film and small-scale mechanical behavior
» Mechanisms of fracture and flow in solids
» Finite element modeling of indentation contact

Selected Awards and Honors

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1977-1979 Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellow
1984 ASM Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers of Metallurgy
1995 Amoco Teaching Award, Rice University
2003 ISI "Highly Cited Researcher" in Materials Science
2004 UT Chancellor's Award for Research and Creative Achievement

Professional Activities

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» Associate Editor, Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 1990-present
» Volume Editor, MRS Bulletin, 2000
» Guest editor, Journal of Materials Research - special focus issue on "Instrumented Indentation Testing", January 2004
» Guest Editor, Philosophical Magazine - special issue on "Instrumented Indentation Testing in Materials Research and Development", December 2006.
» Chair, 2000 Gordon Research Conference on Thin Film Mechanical Behavior, Plymouth, NH, July 2000
» Meeting Co-Chair, Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society, April 1995
» Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Memphis, 2002-2005
» Master - Wiess College, Rice University, 1989-1994

Selected Publications

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Y.F. Gao, H.T. Xu, W.C. Oliver, and G.M. Pharr, "Effective Elastic Modulus of Film-on-Substrate Systems Under Normal and Tangential Contact", in press, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids.

Y. Huang, X. Feng, G.M. Pharr, and K.C. Wang, "A Nanoindentation Model for Spherical Indenters", Modeling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering 15, pp. S255-S262 (2007).

E.G. Herbert, W.C. Oliver, and G.M. Pharr,  "On the Measurement of Yield Strength by Spherical Indentation", Philosophical Magazine 86, pp. 5521-5539 (2006).

Jeremy H. Strader, Sanghoon Shim, Hongbin Bei, W.C. Oliver, and G.M. Pharr,  "An Experimental Evaluation of the Constant b Relating the Contact Stiffness to the Contact Area in Nanoindentation", Philosophical Magazine 86, pp. 5285-5298 (2006).

S. Qu, Y. Huang, G.M. Pharr, and K.C. Huang, "The Indentation Size Effect in the Spherical Indentation of Iridium: A Study via the Conventional Theory of Mechanism-Based Strain Gradient Plasticity", International Journal of Plasticity 22, pp. 1265-1286 (2006).

A. Rar, G.M. Pharr, W.C. Oliver, E. Karapetian, and S.V. Kalinin, "Piezoelectric Nanoindentation", Journal of Materials Research 21, pp. 552-556 (2006).

H. Xu and G.M. Pharr, "An Improved Relation for the Elastic Compliance of a -Film/Substrate System During Indentation with Flat Cylindrical Punch", Scripta Materialia 55, pp. 315-318 (2006).

H. Bei, E.P. George, J.L. Hay, and G.M. Pharr, "Influence of Indenter Tip Geometry on Elastic Deformation During Nanoindentation", Physical Review Letters 95, 045501 (2005).

Jae-il Jang, M.J. Lance, S. Wen, and G.M. Pharr, "Evidence for Nanoindentation-Induced Phase Transformations in Germanium", Applied Physics Letters 86, pp. 131907:1-3 (2005).

Jae-il Jang, M.J. Lance, S. Wen, T.Y. Tsui, and G.M. Pharr, "Indentation-Induced Phase Transformations in Silicon: Influences of Load, Rate and Indenter Angle on the Transformation Behavior", Acta Materialia 53, pp. 1759-1770 (2005).

 

Contact Dr. Pharr

425 Dougherty Engineering Bldg.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-2200
Tel: (865) 974-8202

Email: pharr@utk.edu