Professor Hector Basoalto

PhD, B.Eng (Hons)

School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering

Professor of Metallurgy

Photo of Hector Basoalto
Profile picture of Photo of Hector Basoalto
h.basoalto@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Professor Hector Basoalto
School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering
Sir Robert Hadfield Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 3JD
Profile

Hector Basoalto is Professor of Metallurgy and leads the M2i2 (Multiscale Materials Informatics & Innovation) research group.  He is currently Beacon Director of the Materials Made Smarter Centre (MMSC). He has an established track-record in micromechanics and multiscale material modelling and their applications to gain better scientific understanding of materials behaviour and to industrial related problems. In particular, his theoretical and computational approaches are being implemented within Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) and Digital Threading frameworks focusing on linking manufacturing processes to materials microstructure and properties. He works closely with a number of R&D intensive industrial partners such as Rolls-Royce, GKN and Airbus. In addition, Prof Basoalto is working closely with researchers in other fields such as  mathematicians , physicists and biologists on a range of themes such as physics-based AI for materials and micromechanics of biological membranes.

Professor Basoalto possesses extensive experience in leading research teams in industry and academia: Capability Group Leader at QinetiQ; Technical Director at the HMV Catapult AFRC; Director of the PRISMM computational laboratory at the University of Birmingham.

Research interests

Research activities are centered on advancing the theory and computational physics of material systems, with a specific emphasis on developing and applying multi-scale materials modelling approaches. The primary objective is to establish causal relations between microstructure and properties and a drive to deepen our understanding of the governing principles behind the emergent behaviour of materials, spanning from the evolution of microstructures to the time-dependent properties they exhibit.

In metal plasticity, Professor Basoalto has been working on the mathematical structure of constitutive relations for two-phase alloys. He is working on crystal plasticity approaches as well as on non-local field dislocation mechanics. A mayor aspect of this work is their implementation within finite element schemes and simulate slip band evolution within single and polycrystalline alloys. 

His work on modelling additive manufacture of engineering alloys has focuses on the development of a multiscale materials framework to enable to determine numerically correlations between process parameters, microstructure and properties. Melt-pool dynamics induced by a high energy density heat source are simulated through a fluid mechanics volume of fluids framework. Cellular automata codes have been developed to simulate the solidification microstructures. Mean field models of the precipitate size distributions provide information on the particles size and volume fraction. Crystal plasticity modelling based on the predicted microstructures enable determination of the mechanical behaviour of the 3D printed parts.  

Another aspect of his work involves the development of digital threading frameworks, which leverage data from embedded sensors to drive computational models for generating 3D microstructures and simulating their associated mechanical properties. These digital workflow provide capabilities to enable the design and deployment of Digital Twins. Furthermore, Professor Basoalto is actively involved in advancing integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) frameworks. Through his research, he addresses intricate industrial challenges related to manufacturing processes and component performance, effectively bridging the gap between academic expertise and the practical needs of industry.

Publications

Journal articles

Conference proceedings papers

Research group

Multiscale Materials Informatics and Innovation (M2i2)

M2i2 members:
Professor Hector Basoalto, M2i2 Lead, Technical Director

Prashant Jadhav

Lucia Scotti

Sourabh Supanekar

Miguel Espadero Sanchez-Crespo

Hugh Banes

Connor E Cladingboel

Yanheng Xie

Bonaventure C Ugwuanyi

Zeyu Cao

Mostafa Salem

Dan Calderwood

Dominic Brennan

Vlad Mogilev

Orhan Bicek

Teaching interests

Finite element modelling

Introduction to programming

Metals and alloys: Introduction to deformation mechanics

Diffusion

Solidification processes

Professional activities and memberships

Professor Hector Basoalto and his team have been awarded the following international prizes: 

NIST AM-Bench Challenge 2022 – 1st prize: “Modeling results predicting phase evolution during post-build heat treatments of IN718 test artifacts produced using laser powder bed fusion”.  Winning team: Magnus Anderson, Prashat  Jadhav, Hector Basoalto. 

NIST AM-Bench Challenge 2022 – 2nd prize: “Modeling results predicting residual elastic strain components at select locations internal to an as-built IN718 bridge structure”. Winning team: Prashant Jadhav, Chizhou Fang, Hector Basoalto,

NIST AM-Bench Challenge 2018 – 1st prize: “Best modeling results predicting the phase evolution during residual stress annealing of an as-built IN625 bridge structure”. Winning Team: Magnus Anderson, Jonathan Benson, Hector Basoalto.