The CDT in Advanced Metallics is a partnership between the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester and the I-Form Advanced Manufacturing Centre, Dublin. CDT students undertake the CDT training programme at all three locations throughout the 4-year programme. Titanium alloys are used in high performance rotating components in the aerospace industry, particularly compressor discs, as they possess high strength/weight ratios and excellent fatigue and corrosion resistance. Titanium alloy products are generally forged and machined, and over recent years, the machin-ing force feedback response has been used to provide an indication of grain structure in forged material and the influence of upstream forging on texture development. A key aim of this EngD project is to develop the force feedback approach as a non-destructive evaluation technique for titanium alloy components and upstream forged conditions. One aspect is to detect microstructural regions in forged material that may be more prone to performance limiting features in-service and develop a microstructural digital twin from such force feedback data. This project is hugely important in the manufacture of advanced materials, particularly considering the move to high speed machining for enhanced productivity, as there is no viable non-destructive inspection method capable of determining microstructural variation on-line as the material is being machined. This severely limits the advancement of both new materials and machining techniques. If a reliable in-process NDE approach can be developed, this will provide a vast manufacturing advantage not just in forged product but in other processes that require subtractive machining, such as additive manufacturing. The de-velopment will work will also provide the framework of a digital twin of the workpiece material through key solid state processing steps.
During your PhD, you will develop core skills in machining science and metallurgy, such as microstructural characterisation, process metallurgy and data analytical approaches. You will work collaboratively with a broad range of engineers and researchers and have access to high performance manufacturing and characterisation facilities in the Henry Royce Institute and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. You will also work within a collaborative team including researchers from Sheffield, Strathclyde and Manches-ter. You will develop an insight into the technical advanced manufacturing challenges in the aerospace sec-tor and work closely with engineers at Rolls-Royce and Timet. For more information please contact Prof Martin Jackson ([Email Address Removed]). Advert close date is 9 th March 2021.
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