Danial Salehi

Danial completed his PhD on improving material characterization techniques for lightweight and additively manufactured alloys. He has over 6 years of experience leading and collaborating on different research projects in experimental and computational solid mechanics and material science. He works as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Arizona working on several research projects such as simulation and testing of additively manufactured lattice structures.

I got my mechanical engineering bachelor's and master's from Iran University of Science and Technology then decided to move to the US to study my PhD in solid mechanics. I completed my PhD in four years at the University of Utah where I worked on advancing experimental approaches to measure the conversion of plastic work to heat in lightweight and additive manufactured materials. After completing my PhD I joined the University of Arizona as a postdoctoral associate to work on fatigue, shock, and energy absorption of a wide range of additively manufactured metals. 

These are the tasks and objectives that I actively pursued during my PhD and postdoc:

POSTDOCTORAL research associate | University of Arizona | March 2024 - now

• Supervising, and helping the graduate and undergraduate students with their research projects
• Developing Matlab and Python codes for analyzing and postprocessing of collected data
• Finite element modeling of the plastic deformation, shock behavior, and fatigue response of lattice structures
• Conducting tensile, compression, torsion, and multiaxial monotonic and cyclic testing of additively manufactured materials at room and elevated temperatures 
• Design of experiments and microstructure characterization using electron microscopy and X-ray tomography techniques
• Writing proposals and helping the principal investigator with funding acquisition 
• Writing journal and conference papers and project management

Research assistant | University of Utah | January 2020 – January 2024

• Supervising undergraduate students with their research projects
• Developing Matlab and Python codes for postprocessing of data from experiments
• Developing finite element models in Abaqus for studying the structural and heat transfer response
• Design of experiments for the measurement of conversion of plastic work to heat in metals
• Design of double Schwarzschild optical system for recording the conversion of plastic work to heat in metals
• Design of high emissivity coating suitable for high strain rate experiments
• Mechanical behavior characterization at high strain rates using Kolsky bar experiments
• Material characterization using electron microscopy techniques such as: SEM, EBSD, FIB
• Simultaneous digital image correlation and infrared thermography at high strain rates (>300kfps)
• Training other students on the developed experimental setups and data processing and project management