Chairman's Corner

Professor John Evans

I am writing this Bulletin just before the festive season and therefore, on behalf of your Steering Committee, would like to wish all our members and supporters a very successful New Year. I can also assure you that in 2006 the MNW will continue to provide support through our networking at Seminars, our Bulletin and our Web Site.

In this Bulletin we are continuing our themed approach by focussing specifically on research of relevance being carried out within the academic environment. You will find specific articles on the Materials Research Centre at Swansea, the European Space Agency IMPRESS programme, magnetic materials and a major collaborative research project. It will be evident from these articles that Universities in Wales are involved in Materials research at the highest levels. Some of you may feel that the areas covered are outside your own particular interests but please bear in mind that there can be substantial spin offs from the types of programme highlighted.

Aerospace features significantly in our coverage. It is fitting therefore to highlight the Royal Academy of Engineering lecture, Reception and Dinner to be held at Swansea on 14th February 2006. The event will include detailed insights into the Airbus A380 from Frank Ogilvie who is Aerodynamics Director and Deputy Head of overall Aircraft Design A380. The event will also be attended by the President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Lord Broers. Once again, further details can be found in the Bulletin.

Materials Science Research in Space

PRESS Project Update

Report by Dr Nick Lavery

It has been just over a year since the IMPRESS project started in November 2004 and the MNW bulletin featured an article on the project in last year’s winter edition (‘Swansea Helping Develop Space-Age Materials For Greener Power’). For those who missed the first article, IMPRESS is a 5-year EC integrated project which is looking at the relationship between the processing, structure and properties of novel intermetallic alloys, to help produce new materials (e.g. titanium aluminides) ideal for high-performance gas turbine blades. These light-weight blades have applications in aerospace and power generation turbines, and have the potential to increase fuel efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions. Other alloy compositions being looked at include nickel-based aluminides to be used, in powder form, for applications such as hydrogen fuel cell electrodes.

Figure 1 – Launch of the ESA/DLR-funded Texus 42 sounding rocket on the 1st December, 2005 (Photo courtesy of ESA/DLR)

The project, coordinated by the European Space Agency (ESA), comprises 42 research groups with 150 leading materials scientists from across Europe and Russia, also including scientists from the University of Wales Swansea’s Materials Research Centre, Drs Steve Brown, Martin Bache and Nick Lavery. UK-based industrial collaborators include Rolls-Royce, NPL, CERAM and Qinetiq.

Over the first year alone there have been a number of significant technical achievements and important milestones to the project. In June 2005, a 2nd plenary meeting was held in Stockholm Sweden at which the newly established International Advisory Board was introduced to the scientific team, and included distinguished members such as Vladimir Fortov, ex-deputy prime minister of Russia and head of the Russian Academy of Science. Technical achievements were highlighted by the publication of over 17 journal and conference publications, and in particular, this included an article published in ‘Materials World’ in August 2005. The initial alloy selection has been made and castings of gamma-titanium-aluminium bars have been distributed to the various partners who have started working on the property characterisation and mechanical testing.

During an IMPRESS project training course on ‘Materials Science in Microgravity’ hosted by ESA in the Netherlands on the 1st December, it was announced that the first launch of an experimental payload onboard an ESA/DLR-funded Texus 42 sounding rocket, from the Esrange launch site near Kiruna in northern Sweden, had been successful. This experimental payload, jointly developed by ESA and DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the German Aerospace Centre) as part of the IMPRESS project, gave over six minutes micro-gravity time during which accurate measurements were made of the thermo-physical properties of highly-reactive liquid TiAl alloys using the Electro-Magnetic Levitator (EML).While the data obtained is currently being processed, it is expected to complement earlier data obtained by similar methods on parabolic flights.

These material properties will provide the computer modelling of advanced solidification processes with essential data to fine-tune the models which have also been under development since the start of the project. The modelling has already greatly assisted the design of the casting process which will be used for casting the prototype turbine blades at Birmingham University and ACCESS e.V. in Germany.

Following a first successful annual EC review meeting, the project is firmly on track and has been commended upon its achievements in the first year.

The next IMPRESS Scientific Forum shall take place in San Sebastian, Spain from the 8th-10th May 2006, hosted by INASMET. More information on the project can be found on the web site (http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/impress), or for more specific details about Swansea’s specific involvement in the project, feel free to contact Dr Lavery (N.P.Lavery@swansea.ac.uk).