Prof. Surendra Tewari, in partnership with Prof. Sergio Felicelli of the University of Akron and Prof. Mohsen Eshraghi of the California State University at Los Angeles, has been awarded two research grants from NASA to explore the role convection plays on the microstructure formation during directional solidification.  Under the first two year grant, “Pore-Mushy Zone Interaction during Directional Solidification of Alloys: Three Dimensional Simulation and Comparison with Experiments ($240,000)”, they will develop computational models that will use the experimental data already gathered from the International Space Station to study the defects produced by bubbles or gases when a liquid material solidifies in space. The second four year, $600,000, grant, “Influence of Thermosolutal Convection on the Cellular/dendritic pattern formation during directional solidification of single crystal metallic alloys” is aimed at understanding the relationship between convection during solidification and the resulting microstructural inhomogeneity by comparing samples grown on earth and on the Space Station.   

Prof. Tewari and his students have been working with NASA for a number of years to understand how lack of gravity in space conditions impacts material structure and quality. They just conducted three different solidification experiments on the International Space Station under joint NASA-European Space Agency research project using Al-7%Si alloy. Prof. Tewari and Prof. David Poirier of the University of Arizona currently have another ongoing NASA-project to study cross-section change induced flow during solidification in microgravity. This project, successfully, went through the NASA-Science Concept Review last year; the actual Space Station experiments are expected in 2018-1019. 

Prof. Tewari has a strong research background in the high temperature materials and solidification processing. Starting from 1989 he has brought in more than fifteen million dollar worth of research to CSU via more than fifty externally sponsored projects from federal agencies, such as, NASA and DOE, and industry. These projects have supported more than forty graduate students towards their M.S. and Doctoral degrees and enabled more than a dozen post-doctoral research students to carry out productive research and build-up the materials science research capability within the chemical engineering department. He has more than 160 refereed journal publications. He has received several internal and external recognitions, including, "Distinguished Faculty Award for Research" of the Cleveland State University (1994), Finalist of the “Northern Ohio Live-2000 Award of Achievement”, The Metallurgical Society-Champion H. Mathewson Award for the “paper or series of closely related papers considered the most notable contribution to metallurgical science during 2003”, Fellow of American Society of Materials (ASM)-International 2004 for “Outstanding scientific and technical contributions in solidification processing of materials”, the Fenn College Outstanding Research Award (2011), and the ASM-International Cleveland Chapter Technical Educator Award (2014).