Dr Maina Garcia
Dr Maina Garcia
2011 - BC&T (Bacharel Science & Technology) – Universidade Federal
do ABC (UFABC)
2013 - Material Engineering – Universidade Federal do ABC
2014 - PhD – Department of Nanoscience and Advanced Materials – UFABC – (http://nano.ufabc.edu.br/)
2016-2017 - 1 year visiting PhD student at Department Science of Materials and Metallurgy – University of Cambridge
e-mail: maina.garcia@gmail.com
Research:
“The study of the correlation between metal active gas welding parameters, microstructure, mechanical properties and corrosion behaviour of high-strength steels”
In my project, properties of welded steel, especially the heat-affected zones, of relevance to automotive applications are studied.
Currently the automotive industry is looking for utilisation of materials to allow the manufacturing of lighter vehicles. This way, the use of high-strength low-alloy (HSLA) allows the reduction of thickness of components used by the vehicles. However, when submitted to welding processes, the mechanical performance of such steel grades can be easily modified. Thus, the mechanical properties are evaluated by microhardness, tensile test and fatigue. Also, due to the influence of the environment, corrosion behaviour is a critical point and it is investigated by potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.
Furthermore, the HSLA microstructure and chemical composition are carefully evaluated by several techniques: X-ray diffraction, SEM and TEM.
All the results have been analysed in order to understand the quality of the welded joints in real applications.