My research Interests focus on the fatigue, micromechanics and design of jet engine, aircraft and reactor materials, particularly superalloys, titanium, NiTi, TWIP steels and zirconium. In my group, we work on problems across the life-cycle from alloy design to processing to fatigue and failure.
A lot of the work involes advanced TEM techniques, complementing work at neutron and synchrotron major facilities like ISIS, Diamond, ESRF and SNS. We have also worked on residual stresses, on in situ microbeam Laue synchrotron diffraction on micropillars, on shock loading using the short-pulse X-ray laser at the Stanford XFEL, as well as more routine techniques like EBSD and conventional lab-based characterisation. We also have substantial capability to make and process novel alloys in our lab.
The Impact of this resarch is the prospect of delivering safer, lower emissions air transport and energy systems. This also supports high value manufacturing in the UK, with the UK's large jet engine exporter alone supporting around 100,000 UK jobs in the supply chain and exports of around £8bn/yr.