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Centre for Materials Research
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Engineering Materials:
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Research in the theme Engineering Materials is wide ranging and UCL's research interests in this area can be classified as;
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| Note: this is not an exhaustive list of projects - if you would like include details and/or pictures of your research to these pages email Emma Leighton at e.leighton@ucl.ac.uk. |
- Healthcare Materials Engineering
Healthcare Materials Engineering involves projects that range from medical materials processing, cell engineering and self-assembly, tissue engineering and new materials.
This includes research carried out in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Orthopaedics & Musculoskeletal Science, the Eastman Dental Institute (both Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering & the Clinical Divisions of Restorative Dental Sciences and Craniofaciall and Developmental Sciences) and the Academic Division of Surgical & Interventional Sciences based at the Royal Free Hospital.
Examples of current research projects in the area of Heathcare Materials Engineering includes;
- Cardiovascular Prostheses - Dr Gaetano Burriesci (Mec Eng)
Dr Burriesci actively participated to the design, development and assessment of innovative cardiovascular prostheses (including a family of percutaneous heart valves). See the Cardiovascular Engineering pages for further information.
Researchers at the Eastman Dental Institute investigate the biology of the craniofacial tissues with the aim of improving the design or implementation of remedial tissue engineering applications, reflecting the importance of these tissues in the aetiology of oral diseases.
See the research pages at the EDI for more information.
- Professor Alex Seifalian (Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Centre at the RFHMS)
Development of organs using nanomaterials & stem cell technology - more information to follow shortly.
- Research at the Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Science
Health Materials Engineering at IOMS is conducted by the Centres for; Biomedical Engineering, Tissue Regeneration Science and Clinical Orthopaedics. Examples of research areas at IOMS include;
- Tissue Engineering - tissue engineering of bone, development of connective tissue bioreactors, regulation of 3D tissue growth
- Microbial studies - development of anti-microbial coatings
- Implants - fixation of implants to the skeleton, material properties associated with joint replacements, design of total joint replacement, CAD-CAM implants for total hip replacements
See the IOMS research pages for further information.
- Health Materials Engineering researchis also conducted at the Centre for Clinical Science and Technology - a joint centre between the Division of Medicine and the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering
Projects involve absorbency science, the design of incontinence products and the development of methodologies for characterising and evaluating incontinence products and materials in clinical and laboratory settings.
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Functional Materials projects cover nanotechnology, thin and thick films, diamond, semiconductors, defect structures, devices, photonic materials and novel processing.
This includes research carried out in the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Departments of Physics, Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering:
Examples of current research areas/projects includes;
- Thin film diamond nucleation and growth - Diamond Electronics Group (Elec. Eng)
R.B. Jakeman, M.D. Whitfield, R.D. Marshall, J.S. Foord* and J.A. Savage+
See the Diamond Electronics group webpages for further information
- The Photonic Materials Group (Elec. Eng)
Current research projects include;
- Rare-earth doped optical materials
- Light emission from silicon nanoclusters
- Light emission from dislocations in silicon
- RF analysis of technological plasmas
- Vacuum microelectronics
See the Photonic Materials group webpages for further information
- Centre for Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (Physics/LCN)
Professor Gabe Aeppli, Professor Des McMorrow, Professor Franco Cacialli, Professor Neal Skipper, Dr Stan Zochowski, Professor Arokia Nathan
Research areas investigated by the CMMP include;
- Liquids & Colloids
- Structures & Phase Transitions
- Defects & Disorder
- Surfaces & Interfaces
Magnetic
materials
- Techniques
- Organic
Semiconductors
See the CMMP website or individual researchers pages in the LCN directory for more information.
Professor Parkin's group has developed APCVD routes to metal nitrides (VN, TiN, CrN) metal sufides (SnS, SnS2) and metal oxides (Cr2O3, VO2). These materials find application in hardness and solar control coatings. In conjunction with Pilkington Glass they are conducting pilot plant testing of metal oxynitrides as antireflective coatings and heat mirrors. In conjunction with Dr C. J. Carmalt, the group are designing, synthesising and evaluating new chemical precursors for the CVD of transition metal sulfides.
See Professor Parkin's webpage for more information and links to recent grant reports.
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- Structural Materials
Projects in Structural Materials include porous media, microporous solids, advanced ceramics, clay, ice, concrete, metallurgy biased towards structural integrity evaluations, particularly by non-destructive testing and ultrasonics, historial metallurgy.
Research is carried out in the Departments of Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and the Institute of Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies.
Examples of current research projects/areas includes;
Buckling of Structural Shells: This is a longstanding research interest that is currently focused on the use of the reduced stiffness method (RSM) for better designing shells constructed from advanced composites. The RSM is being validated as a means of predicting safe lower bounds to the buckling into each of the potential buckling modes. This will then allow the identification of the energy components most effective to the resistance of buckling in each mode, which in turn will suggest better strategies for orientating and positioning fibre reinforcement to achieve optimal mechanical and material performance. The approach extends that previously developed for the design of rib-stiffened shells.
Click on the links for more information about the work of Professor Croll and the Structural Engineering group in the Department of Civil Engineering.
- Also in Civil Engineering is the Concrete Technology Group, whose main interests are in the area of concrete materials technology, with a focus on self-compacting concrete, the rheology of fresh concrete and its measurement, and on several aspects of high strength concrete, including, in particular, workability, rheology, early age behaviour and strength development.
- Non-destructive testing/Ultrasonics (Mech Eng)
Dr Paul Fromme, Dr Alex Livshics, Dr Nader Saffari, Dr Eleanor Stride
The Ultrasonic's group specialises in characterisation of engineering materials and biomaterials, mathematical modelling of ultrasound propagation, characterisation of contrast agents for medical imaging and therapeutics and guided waves for large area structural integrity monitoring.
Current research projects in the Structural Materials Engineering area include; (see the group's webpages for further information)
- Guided Waves for Large Area Inspection
- Automatic Fatigue Crack Growth Monitoring
- Modelling of Elastic-Wave Multiple Scattering in Composites
- Micro-channelling in Synthetic Collagen Constructs
- Ultrasonic Evaluation of Metal-Matrix Composites
Flow of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (Leverhulme Trust-funded research project for £100k: 2002-7)
We are studying the anistropic flow of the Antarctic ice sheet with the aim of improving models of ice sheet response to climate change. To do this we have constructed a new Cold Room Complex for Ice & Climate Research which consists of 5 inter-connected cold rooms with independent temperature control. We have designed and built a new unique triaxial deformation and tomographic imaging cell for ice, funded by the Paul Instrument Fund. Click here for a view of the deformation cell. We are testing EPICA ice from the European deep boreholes in Antarctica at Dome C and Dronning Maud Land. Dmitri joined the AWI EPICA expedition to Dronning Maud Land.
See Professor Sammonds and the Mineral, Ice and Rock Physics Laboratory webpages for further information on Structural Materials research in Earth Sciences.
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- Flow Materials Engineering
Flow Materials Engineering includes research carried out in the Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.
Projects involved include diffusion studies, effects of high pressure, colloidal, multiphase, suspension flows and particle behaviour. It is also that, in addition to the above, there is substantial research work on materials characterisation techniques, very relevant to this theme, in the Department of Chemistry, Earth Sciences, London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Department of Physics and the Institute of Archaeology-Metallurgy, Eastman Dental Institute etc.
Process scale two-phase flows
Current studies focus on the separation of water during aqueous-organic horizontal and inclined flows, which can contribute to the corrosion of the pipelines but also facilitate the separation of the two-phase mixture. Work has also been initiated on the study of high concentration dispersed flows, and particularly on the phenomenon of phase inversion, through sophisticated experimentation on local flow parameters and modelling at mesoscale and process level.
The work is aided by specialised and often not commercially available instrumentation, developed by the research group in-house.
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This page last modified
17 June, 2008
by CMR Web Admin |
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Healthcare Materials Engineering researchers at UCL
Functional Materials Engineering researchers at UCL
Structural Materials Engineering researchers at UCL
Flow Materials Engineering researchers at UCL
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