Michael D. Sangid
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Chancellor’s Professor
Associate Director of CoE Aerospace Engineering Programs
Email: sangid@berkeley.edu
Michael D. Sangid received his B.S. (2002), M.S. (2005), PhD (2010) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). After his Master’s degree, Dr. Sangid spent two years working on aerospace gas turbine engines for Rolls-Royce Corporation, before returning for his PhD to focus on computational materials models for fatigue predictions. He continued as a post-doctoral associate at UIUC on in-situ experimental validation and reduced order modeling. Dr. Sangid worked 15 years at Purdue University in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics with a courtesy appointment in Materials Engineering, starting as an Assistant Professor and working through the ranks to a Reilly named Professorship. He led numerous service activities, including Dean’s Fellow for Educational Virtual Lab Development and Deployment (transforming 29 courses across the Colleges of Engineering and Sciences), Faculty Advisor for Purdue Space Day, Director of the Purdue Institute for National Security, and co-Director of Defense Innovation. Dr. Sangid started and served as the inaugural Executive Director of the Hypersonics Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center, which was the first contract of the Purdue Applied Research Institute. He established the Advanced Computational Materials & Experimental Evaluation (ACME2) Lab, where his research group develops predictive models for failure of structural materials with experimental validation efforts focused on characterization of the stress/strain evolution and precursors to failure at the microstructural scale during in-situ loading. He is a recipient of the TMS Young Leaders Award in Structural Materials Division, 2013; DARPA Early Career Research Faculty, 2014; ONR Young Investigator Award, 2014; AFOSR Young Investigator Award, 2014; NAE Frontiers of Engineering Participant in Aerospace Materials, 2014; ASME Materials Division – Orr Early Career Award, 2015; TMS Early Career Faculty Fellow, 2016; DARPA Director’s Award, 2016; NSF CAREER Award, 2017; CT Sun Research Award, 2021; University Faculty Scholar, 2022; AIAA Associate Fellow, 2024; and TMS Brimacombe Award, 2025. He is involved in numerous service roles across professional societies – TMS (including the Chair of the Mechanical Behavior of Materials Committee, 2022-2023) and AIAA (including founding member of the Integrated Computational Materials Engineering Committee). He remains engaged with synchrotron user facilities, supporting the development of a new end station at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) in Argonne National Laboratory, supporting the science case for the APS upgrade, serving on the scattering review committee within APS, and serving on the external advisory board for the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source. He is currently serving as an editor of the International Journal of Fatigue.
Links:
Research Description:
Professor Sangid’s research activities combine knowledge of materials science, solid mechanics, and advanced manufacturing to solve complex problems in materials behavior and processing. His research group employs physics-based computational modeling and design tools, which are experimentally validated. The goal of this work is to improve our understanding and our tools for designing, processing, and lifing materials through simulation-based modeling of the microstructure and defects. His research specifically focuses on (micro)structure to performance modeling, via multi-scale models for plasticity, fatigue, and fracture of metallic alloys and high temperature composites. Both material systems have direct applications in Aerospace Engineering. Many times, it is necessary to start at the microstructure and defect levels to gain a quantifiable understanding of the variability introduced during the manufacturing process and establish deformation pathways and failure mechanisms at component scales. Further, there is also an experimental component to his research as he does advanced materials testing and characterization including digital image correlation, advanced microscopy, and synchrotron-based high-energy x-ray diffraction. Thus, the most advanced characterization and interrogation methods are exercised at each scale to validate model predictions, including time resolved 3D mapping of ‘defect’ features, strain fields, and complex stress states within the material.
Professor Sangid is the principal director of the Advanced Computational Materials and Experimental Evaluation (ACME) Laboratory. The ACME group’s philosophy is to simultaneously address fundamental research needs and implement this knowledge into integrated models that can directly aid in and transform our design methodologies providing pragmatic engineering solutions. He works very closely with many major companies in the Aerospace Industry, as well as small and medium manufacturers. The specific areas include the following:
Build materials models to relate structure to properties, in order to:
• Reduce time and cost of material development and qualification,
• Tailor component properties, and
• Design new materials and structures.
Advanced characterization and in situ experiments to:
• Acquire real-time quantitative view and understanding of the precursors to failure: fatigue, fracture, plasticity, creep, debonding, and delamination.
• Enable microstructure level view of material performance for model validation at the pertinent length/time-scales.
Research Application: Provide a fully-integrated framework for aerospace structural materials, including high temperature engineering alloys, lightweight alloys, fiber reinforced composites, ceramic matrix composites, and additive manufactured materials.
Keywords: Physical basis of failure mechanisms (fatigue, fracture, etc.); Coupled simulations and in situ experiments for model validation; Accelerated qualification of structural materials (including additive manufacturing); Location specific life analysis and property tailoring of components; Digital manufacturing and lifecycle management (digital twin)
Key Publications:
For the latest list of publications, please refer to: Dr. Sangid’s Google Scholar page