Michael Short

Michael Short joined the faculty in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering in July, 2013. He brings 15 years of research experience in the field of nuclear materials, microstructural characterization, and alloy development. His group’s research is a mixture of large-scale experiments, micro/nanoscale characterization, and multiphysics modeling & simulation. The main areas of Short’s research focus on 1) Non-contact, non-destructive measurement of irradiated material properties using transient grating spectroscopy (TGS) more, 2) Preventing the deposition of deleterious phases, such as CRUD in nuclear reactors, as fouling deposits in energy systems more, and 3) Quantification of radiation damage by stored energy fingerprints more. This last project was recently selected for an NSF CAREER award.

Education

B.S., Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT, 2005 B.S., Materials Science and Engineering, MIT, 2005 M.S., Materials Science and Engineering, MIT, 2010 Ph.D., Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT, 2010 AwardsWARDS Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2017 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, 2016 Earll S. Murman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, MIT, 2016 Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising, MIT 2016 Best Poster — 1st annual MIT NSE Research Expo, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 2010 Best Nuclear Energy Presentation — 2nd Tokyo Tech MERCES Forum, Okinawa, Japan, 2009 Best Graduate Paper — Bodycote 2009 Paper Prize Competition, Köln, Germany

Research

The Development of Fouling Resistant Materials Fouling, or the unwanted deposition of species on mission-critical material surfaces, is an enormous problem affecting industries throughout the world. The impediments to heat transfer, increases in pressure drops, and accelerated corrosion cost most developed nations including the United States 0.25% of their gross domestic product (GDP) each year, which amounted to $43 billion in 2013. We use the Lifshitz theory of van der Waals (VDW) forces to design material coatings to eliminate or delay the onset of fouling in nuclear reactors, geothermal heat systems, and other energy applications. See more of what we do to understand and eliminate fouling here.

In-Situ Mesoscale Nuclear Materials Science with Transient Grating Spectroscopy (TGS) As a wise man once told me, “stuff tends to be made out of materials.” The continued performance of anything depends on the continued performance of the materials that comprise it. In the nuclear world, however, many major issues take months to decades to appear, making the licensable testing of nuclear materials incredibly time consuming and expensive. We use transient grating spectroscopy (TGS), a picosecond, ultrasonic laser excitation technique, to measure thermo-elastic material properties in-situ, or during irradiation. This can help us discover when materials undergo changes like void swelling, which can take 10-20 years to appear in a reactor, within hours using accelerated testing. It also allows us to take month-to-year long experimental testing campaigns, and shrink them to a single in-situ experiment lasting a few days. See more of what we do with transient grating spectroscopy here.

The Stored Energy Fingerprints of Radiation Damage The concept of "damage" to a metal remains difficult to quantify. Metals are among our most important structural materials, providing the backbone to everything from buildings, to bridges, to nuclear reactors. If we had a universal way to measure damage, we would be able to better predict when metals would fail, measure their degradation during service, and design new metals to be both longer-lasting and more economical. The use of stored energy fingerprints is proposed as a way to quantify damage to metals from any damaging process. We focus on radiation damage as an ideal way to make all the types of defects found in metals. A two-pronged experimental and simulation approach will be used to quantify and understand these stored energy fingerprints, relating them directly to the defects created by damage. Immediate applications of this work range from reconciling the differences between ion and neutron irradiation, to predicting material property changes due to radiation damage, to verifying the historical usage of uranium enrichment centrifuges. This project is in its infancy, check back regularly for more updates.