Research Fellow (Digital Twins for Steel Processing – Experimental Validation) (110115-0225)

About the Role

For informal queries, please email Claire Davis (Professor) at claire.davis@warwick.ac.uk.

A talented individual with a background in steel metallurgy, ideally with experience of materials modelling, is being invited to join a team of researchers working on developing digital twins for steel processing in the Advanced Steel Research Centre (ASRC) in WMG, the University of Warwick to work on industrially relevant research projects to improve steel processes and products.

The manufacturing of steel products is a complex multi-stage activity where variations in upstream processes affect the downstream processes and properties.

To increase competitiveness, the steel and metal industries need to understand and exploit the relationships between processing and metallurgical properties, particularly when introducing new grades and/or changes in process.

Steel processing windows are naturally conservative and the development of new or improved grades is expensive and time consuming, for example plant trials for a new grade can produce 100’s tonnes of scrap, worth anywhere from £200-£3k/tonne. In addition, the timescales to the introduction of a new grade can be years.

Therefore, there is a need for accurate process models that include metallurgical understanding to support new grade development and optimisation within commercially acceptable processing windows.

This will allow reduced costs (leaner grades / shorter development times) and/or improved performance (higher strength, more consistent properties), which will enhance industrial competitiveness.

About You
Digital twins offer a way to interrogate scenarios to which real world trials would be expensive or impractical.

This role is looking for a talented individual to work in the team developing digital twins for the steel sector.

Specifically, this role is predominantly experimentally based to validate the digital twins and support the inclusion of metallurgical rules into the models.

Experimental validation could include use of the rapid alloy processing facility in the ASRC (casting, hot and cold rolling, heat treatments, Gleeble simulations) and characterisation (electron microscopy, mechanical testing).

Ideally support for metallurgical predictions, using software such as ThermoCalc and JMatPro, could also be offered.

Full details of the duties and selection criteria for this role can be found in the vacancy advert on the University of Warwick's jobs pages. You will be routed to this when you click on the Apply button.

If you are near submission or have recently submitted your PhD but have not yet had it conferred, any offers of employment will be made as Research Assistant at the top of level 5 of the University grade structure. Upon receipt of evidence of the successful award of your PhD, you will be promoted to Research Fellow on the first point of level 6 of the University grade structure.

CLOSING DATE: Tuesday 04 March 2025 at 11.55pm.

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