Ryan Sills

Professor Ryan Sills

Assistant Professor

Materials Science and Engineering

Phone:848-445-4942
Fax:732-445-5595
Email: ryan.sills@rutgers.edu
Office:CCR-108
Office Hours: By Appointment
Website: mmod.rutgers.edu

Link to Dr. Sills’ Google Scholar Page

 

Biography

Professor Sills joined the MSE faculty at Rutgers in 2019 after working as a staff member at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, CA for 9 years. At Sandia, Prof. Sills partnered with experimentalists, materials scientists, microscopists, and theorists on research projects across a variety of applications while serving as PI for an R&D portfolio. Prof. Sills also served as a design engineer on products for storage of high pressure hydrogen isotopes. He is trained as a mechanical engineer with his research interests focused on computational materials science techniques applied to mechanics of materials.

Research

Professor Sills leads the Micromechanics of Deformation (mMOD) Research Group, which focuses on applying advanced computational tools to study the mechanical behaviors of materials. The research conducted in his group lies at the intersection of multiscale materials modeling, deformation micromechanics, and mechanical performance of materials. Prof. Sills’ primary expertise is in the multiscale simulation of plasticity, damage, and fracture in metals and laminated composites, but he has broad interests across many different material classes, modeling techniques, and failure modes. His research group has a dedicated 1000 core, 4 GPU computing cluster in the School of Engineering that enables large systems to be rapidly modeled.  

Teaching

Professor Sills' teaching responsibilities during the 2021-2022 school year are:

Fall 2021:

  • Mechanical Behavior of Materials (Graduate), 16:635:513                        

Spring 2022: 

  • Physics of Materials, 14:635:212

Education

PhD, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University

MS, Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan

BS, Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University

Honors

  1. Enhanced Composites via Selective Interfacial Modification, Patent Pending, Application No. 16/352,004
  2. James Clerk Maxwell Writers Prize for 2016, Awarded by Philosophical Magazine
  3. Highlights of 2016, Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering

 

Selected Publications

  1. Sills R.B., Bertin N., Aghaei A., and Cai W. Dislocation Networks and the Microstructural Origin of Strain Hardening. Phys. Rev. Lett. 121 085501 (2018).
  2. Sills R.B. and Cai. W. Free Energy Change of a Dislocation Due to a Cottrell Atmosphere, Phil. Mag., 98 1491-1510 (2018).
  3. Sills R.B. and Aubry S. Line Dislocation Dynamics Simulations with Complex Physics, In: Handbook of Materials Modeling, Eds.: Andreoni W. and Yip S. Springer, Cham (2018).
  4. Akhondzadeh S., Sills R.B., Papanikolaou S., Van der Giessen E., and Cai W. Geometrically Projected Discrete Dislocation Dynamics, Modell. Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng., 26 065011 (2018).
  5. Zhou X.W., Foster M.E. and Sills R.B. An Fe-Ni-Cr Embedded Atom Method Potential for Austenitic and Ferritic Systems, J. Comp. Chem., 39 2420-2431 (2018).
  6. Zhou X.W., Sills R.B., Ward D.K., and Karnesky R.A. Atomistic Calculations of Dislocation Core Energy in Aluminum, Phys. Rev. B, 95 054112 (2017).
  7. Sills R.B., Kuykendall W.P., Aghaei A., and Cai W. Fundamentals of Dislocation Dynamics Simulations. In: Multiscale Materials Modeling for Nanomechanics, Eds.: Weinberger C.R. and Tucker G.J. Springer, Switzerland (2016).
  8. Sills R.B., Aghaei, A., and Cai W. Advanced Time Integration Algorithms for Dislocation Dynamics Simulations of Work Hardening. Modell. Simul. Mater. Sci. Eng. 24 045019 (2016). (Selected for “Highlights of 2016”)
  9. Sills R.B. and Cai W. Solute Drag on Perfect and Extended Dislocations. Phil. Mag. 96 895-921 (2016). (Awarded the Maxwell Writer’s Prize)
  10. Sun Y., Sills R.B., Hu X., Seh Z.W., Xiao X., Xu H., Luo W., Jin H., Xin Y., Li T., Zhang Z., Zhou J., Cai W., Huang Y., and Cui Y. A Bamboo-Inspired Nanostructure Design for Flexible, Foldable, and Twistable Energy Storage Devices. Nano letters. 15 3899-3906 (2015).
  11. Sills R.B. and Thouless M.D. Cohesive-Length Scales for Damage and Toughening Mechanisms. Int. J. Sol. Struct. 55 32-43 (2015).
  12. Cai W., Sills R.B., Barnett D.M., and Nix W.D. Modeling a Distribution of Point Defects as Misfitting Inclusions in Stressed Solids. J. Mech. Phys. Sol. 66 154-171 (2014).
  13. Sills R.B. and and Cai W. Efficient Time Integration in Dislocation Dynamics. Modell. Simul. Mat. Sci. Eng. 22 (2014). 
  14. Sills R.B. and Thouless M.D. The Effect of Cohesive-Law Parameters on Mixed-Mode Fracture, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, 109 353-368 (2013).