DENTON, Texas (UNT) — The University of North Texas will soon be home to a rare piece of equipment. The Army Research Office has agreed to fund $417,000 for a custom built multi-physics materials processing machine to help the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering.

“This equipment will be able to apply up to 2.5 Tesla of magnetic field while deforming the material at various temperatures,” said Rajiv Mishra, director of the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Processes Institute and UNT Distinguished Research Professor of materials science and engineering. “The idea is to create unique microstructures in metallic alloys under the combined effect of mechanical stress, magnetic field and temperature. It is a first of its kind machine at any university.”

The equipment will serve as a discovery tool to expand the microstructural pathways for enhanced performance in steels, aluminum alloys, titanium alloys and magnesium alloys. This effort builds on the existing cooperative agreement between the Army Research Laboratory and the University of North Texas, which has already produced exceptional strength-ductility combinations.

The funding is part of Department of Defense’s Defense University Research Instrumentation Program that supports cutting edge defense research and is associated with graduate student research training.