Micromechanical Modelling and Experimentation

当今人类面临的最大挑战集中在能源供应的可持续性上。重要的是开发对环境影响最小的可靠能源。此外，对我们的运输系统，特别是航空航天系统来说，最有效地利用能源也很重要。经济挑战在于基于现有能源开发可靠和高效的发电系统。在实践中，这意味着核电，从长远来看，意味着核聚变。这对材料工程研究的需求是为高温材料提供解决方案，这些解决方案将为系统和工厂改进的大规模设计奠定基础。同样，减少排放和提高航空航天效率的要求意味着，需要开发能够在比目前更高的温度下提供所需性能的材料系统。为了解决这些问题，重要的是更深入地了解材料在负载和环境条件下的行为，这些条件代表了将在实践中经历的情况。在这个项目中，将开发一种完全集成的建模和实验方法，该方法将探索各种不同尺度的材料行为。从这些研究中得到的新见解将使我们能够开发出可以在工业环境中使用的改进的基于物理的模型。与工业界建立紧密的伙伴关系，对达致这个目标至为重要。为了达致我们的研究目标，我们亦必须维持和进一步发展研究基地的专业知识，以应付这些艰巨的科学和技术挑战。这笔赠款的一个主要目标将是为应对这些挑战所需的专业知识的长期可持续性建立基础设施。这将涉及发展与其他主要国际学术团体的伙伴关系。

The greatest challenges that face mankind today centre on sustainability of the energy supply. It is important to develop reliable sources of energy that that have minimal impact on the environment. Also, it is important for our transport system, particularly aerospace, to make the most efficent use of energy resources. The economic challenge lies in the development of reliable and efficient generation systems based on the available sources of energy. In practice this means nuclear power, and, in the longer term, fusion. The demand this places on materials engineering research is to supply solutions for high temperature materials that would underpin improved large scale designs for systems and plant. Siimilarly, the requirement to reduce emmissions and increase efficiency in aerospace, means that material systems will need to be developed that can deliver the required performance at much higher temperatures than at present.In order to solve these problems, it will be important to develop a more in-depth understanding of material behaviour under loading and environmental conditions that are representative of those that will be experinced in practice. In this project, a fully integrated approach to modelling and experimentation will be developed, which will explore the material behaviour across a range of different scales. The new insight developed from these studies will allow us to develop improved physically based models that can be used in an industrial envionment. Strong partnerships with industry will be important in achieving this goal.In order to achieve our research objectives we must also sustain and further develop the expertise of the research base that is required to tackle these demanding scientific and technological challenges. A major objective of this grant will be to create the infrastructure for the long term sustainability of expertise that will be required to meet these challenges. This will involve the development of partnerships with other leading international academic groups.