Assistant Professor Junhe Lian strives for better steel materials

Junhe Lian is an international expert in computational materials and mechanics. He was appointed Assistant Professor in advanced steel and applications at the Aalto University School of Engineering for the five years period from 15 August 2018 to 14 August 2021. The position is located in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

‘My passion has always been mathematics and computer science since I was very young and interestingly later in my career I brought these two elements into materials and mechanics’, says Lian. ‘Here in Aalto University I’m focusing on metal research, since I want to create design principles for materials and manufacturing such as 3D printing by using establishing a computational and data-driven method.’

The goal is to develop an extremely good metal by an efficient and novel manufacturing method with high strength and also very good fracture behavior.

Strong metal which does not break easily.

‘The challenge is to link the process, microstructure and properties all together. Their interaction is on the one hand an intrinsic multiscale problem from atom level to meter scale and on the other hand involving many extrinsic parameters, such as temperature, loading speed, history, etc. To deal this complex problem, it is exactly what the computational method and material informatics are made for. ’, Lian explains.

‘One of my latest research themes is lithium-ion batteries’, reveals Lian. ‘It is more than metals. More complicated! But the solving tool is generally the same as what I’m developing for metal. I will try to connect it to the computational platform that we are developing for material & product design’.

Wide international experience

‘I come from China, from a small town with about 2.5 million people close to Beijing around 400 kilometres!’, Lian tells.

Before arriving to Aalto University Lian worked as a group leader in the Damage Tolerance working group at the Steel Institute at RWTH Aachen University for more than two years. During this period, he has been invited to Impact and Crashworthiness Laboratory (ICL) at MIT as visiting scholar for more than six months.  He completed his PhD at the Steel Institute at RWTH Aachen University in 2015. Topic of his dissertation was A generalised hybrid damage mechanics model for steel sheets and heavy plates. .

He has a significant research network consisting of several universities, research institutes and steel companies; University Gent, University of Thessaly, Arcelormittal (OCAS) and Thyssenkrupp Europe Steel (TKSE), University of Braunschweig, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Arcelormittal (OCAS), and MIT.

Lian has published over 50 journal publications and 20 scholarly articles. He is reviewer for several peer-reviewed scientific journals e.g. Computational Materials Science, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids, International Journal of Damage Mechanics, International Journal of Mechanical Science, Materials, Metals, etc. (do we write membership and prizes?)

I’m also quite good at snooker and table tennis, but haven’t yet found anyone to play with here in Aalto.’ Who would be brave enough to take the challenge?

Contact information:

Junhe Lian, Assistant Professor
[email protected]
Tel. +358050 4770 765