Khadka Wins Clarkson University MAE Awards Best Graduate Student Research Paper

Clarkson University's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering recently held its annual MAE Award, and the MAE Awards Committee has announced Sandeep Khadka as the winner of the department's 2024 award for Best Graduate Student Research Paper.

This award is given in recognition of exemplary graduate student led research published in the 2023 calendar year. In making the selection for this award, the faculty committee considered both the quality of the paper itself and the importance of its findings to its field.

Khadka was lead author on a paper titled, "Laves Phase and Equiaxed Grains Formation in Directed Energy Deposited AlCuFeNiTi High Entropy Alloy."

The article was published in Journal of Alloys and Compounds, which is one of the top ranked journals in its field. The work describes an innovative approach to additive manufacturing employing high entropy alloys, which is a class of metals in which five or more elements are combined in nearly equal proportions. The resulting material demonstrated an equiaxed grain morphology, which is typically difficult to achieve in an additively manufactured high entropy alloy and results in superior mechanical properties and thermal stability.