Micromechanical Modelling and Experimentation

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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.