A four year UK PhD with integrated studies is available in the group of Prof Sandy Knowles within the School of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham, with a tax-free stipend of £25,780 per year.
This project is co-sponsored by the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Transformation of the Metals Industry (DigitalMetal) alongside UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) being co-supervised by Dr David Bowden (UKAEA, and Honorary Associate Professor at UoB). The industry aligned EPSRC DigitalMetal CDT offers a four year training programme on integrating data driven with physics-based models of products equipping students with the knowledge and skills to traverse multiple domains. The Materials for eXtremes (M4X) research group (https://more.bham.ac.uk/M4X/) investigates new alloys for extreme environments from fusion & fission reactors, to aerospace gas turbines and concentrated solar power. This involves the design of fundamentally new alloys by computational methods; production through arc melting, powder metallurgy or additive manufacturing; characterisation using advanced electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction techniques; mechanical testing using macro/micro-mechanical methods and failure investigation; and environmental behaviour under oxidation/corrosion and irradiation damage.
Commercial fusion power plants (FPPs) need to operate at high temperatures to allow the fusing of deuterium and tritium fuels, as well as to optimise the efficiency of the electrical output. These FPPs will require structural materials capable of operating at high temperatures, and able to maintain integrity with a high degree of radiation damage (up to 38 displacements per atom (dpa) in steel per full power year). Because of poor creep lifetimes, conventional structural steels such as Eurofer97 are constrained to a maximum operating temperature of 550°C. Conventional ferritic martensitic alloys also suffer from limited radiation damage tolerance. To provide maximum economic and commercial viability, future commercial FPPs will need to increase operating temperatures beyond this conventional constraint up to, and possibly above, 650°C; as well as increasing irradiation tolerance and design life.
Steels such as castable nanostructured alloys (CNAs), oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) and Intermetallic dispersion-strengthened (IDS) [1] steels are proposed as next-generation structural material candidates, alongside more exotic alternatives such as high entropy alloys (HEAs)/compositionally complex alloys (CCAs) and bcc-superalloys that are a key focus for the UoB M4X group [1,2], alongside novel silicides pioneered by D Bowden [3]. These steels rely on fine dispersion of phases that impart excellent strengthening, creep resistance and radiation resilience properties into the material.
However, the discovery and demonstration of nuclear materials is hugely time consuming using established methods. In this project we will utilise High-Throughput Combinatorial approaches, with a key goal to utilise gradient methodologies, e.g. for composition [4] tied 2D to oxidation [4], and/or temperature [5] and irradiation [1,5]. This will then be linked to dataset correlations, e.g. [6], for hardness and phase data. The project will also utilise computational design [2,4] e.g. CALPHAD, ML, paired with experts at UoB, UKAEA and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. It is anticipated the project will be ~50:50 experiments:modelling with training & support provided on both aspects.
The candidate should have a 1st / 2:1 class Undergraduate or Masters degree (or equivalent) in Materials Science, or related science/engineering discipline. A background in coding, microstructural characterisation and/or mechanical testing would be advantageous but is not required.
To Apply please provide: (1) A curriculum vitae (CV), (2) A Cover Letter summarising your research interests and suitability for the position, and (3) The contact details of two Referees. Please send to Prof Sandy Knowles - a.j.knowles@bham.ac.uk www.birmingham.ac.uk/ajknowles https://more.bham.ac.uk/M4X
