PhD Studentship: High-Throughput Combinatorial Discovery & Demonstration of Novel Fusion Alloys, PhD with UKAEA

A funded 3.5-year UK PhD studentship 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 £19,237 per year.

This project is co-sponsored by UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and co-supervised by Dr David Bowden.

The Materials for eXtremes (M4X - https://more.bham.ac.uk/M4X/) research group 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 steels 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.

This project seeks a step-change in the discovery and demonstration of materials for fusion by exploiting combinatorial methods, namely composition/microstructure/testing gradients and mapping technologies. This builds on our research carried out in this area previously, covering novel intermetallic reinforcements within the body-centred cubic (bcc) steel matrix [1,2,3]. This project will study reinforcement/matrix coherency with a focus on interface sink strengths, and in-situ evolution [4], alongside the engineering performance of these novel steels. Alongside the B2-aluminides, Heusler and π-silicides there is strong synergy with recent G-phase reinforced steels, opening up new design spaces. One key area of this project is to tailor the silicide/aluminide-strengthened steel compositions for low-activation fusion environment requirements, and to perform irradiation experiments using the University of Birmingham based NNUF neutron and proton irradiation facility [5].

The aims of this project are to:

• Explore the compositional space for reduced-activation aluminide/silicide strengthened steels, through modelling and combinatorial alloy discovery.
• Undertake microstructural characterisation of the gradient materials produced in the project, including x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), including data analytics.
• Investigate the performance of ferritic superalloy aluminide Fe2AlV steels, maraging Fe2SiTi-strengthened steels and silicide-strengthened steels under high-temperature mechanical loads, as well as irradiation damage.

The candidate should have a 1st/2.1 class Undergraduate or Masters degree (or equivalent) in Materials Science, or a related discipline.

To Apply please provide:

(1) CV,

(2) 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

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