Laser texturing of advanced materials for resource efficient engineering

Applications are accepted for a PhD project in the area of laser texturing of advanced material. The project objectives are as follows: i) to design a process for developing and implementing hybrid laser-texturing manufacturing platforms; ii) to study and optimize the laser ablation technology; iii) to develop and validate laser texturing strategies together with their associated software solutions; iv) to investigate the metrology characteristics of surfaces textured with different laser processing settings; v) to investigate and develop further the capabilities of latest generation pulsed lasers and high dynamics 3D beam delivery systems for texturing 3D surfaces; vi) to create and validate FEA models for predicting the fluid dynamics response of laser textured surfaces.

It is likely that the research activities will involve industrial collaboration and relevance.

The Laser Processing Group within the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Birmingham has state-of-the-art laser micro machining and characterisation equipment including, a multi-axis laser micro machining centre and Alicona G5 InfiniteFocus system. The Group conducts research in the area of advanced laser processing in particular: i) design, implementation and testing of reconfigurable laser micro processing platforms for structuring, texturing and polishing of large (bigger than the field of view) 3D surfaces; ii) investigation of laser-material interactions of advanced engineering materials such as aerospace alloys, stainless steel, bulk metallic glasses, etc.; iii) process design in implementing laser-based modules/systems for functional surface structuring, texturing, polishing and annealing that can be integrated with other machining processes, e.g. milling, into integrated machining platforms; iv) synergistic process-material engineering for deployment of laser processing technology in combination with advanced material processing technologies for producing layers or components of nanophase and glassy materials.