Materials engineering PhD scholarship

The Ph.D. project will be conducted within the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering working on an industry-funded project to understand fracture mechanisms of high strength steel cords during the manufacturing process.  The project aims to investigate and understand the fracture causes of the steel rods/wires during the manufacturing of the high-grade steel cords through failure analysis and microstructural and defects characterization using innovative techniques, including computational simulation.  Together with the new scientific knowledge generated from the fundamental studies on microalloying of the cord steels with other solutes and on cementite dissolution during cold drawing, new techniques/methods to solve this long-standing problem will be proposed and initially validated.

Eligibility Criteria/ Scholarship Guidelines

To meet the Graduate School admissions requirements for a Ph.D., applicants must provide evidence of the following:

Sound knowledge of the science and engineering of metals, steels in particular.

Capacity to participate in the production of experimental iron, steel and aluminum castings in the University’s experimental foundry, taking part in quality assurance and traceability monitoring.

Well-developed laboratory and practical skills, including safe operation of rotating equipment, accurate measurements, and data recording.

Capacity to participate in field trials at remote steel manufacturing sites, liaising with site personnel and taking detailed on-site measurements of worn multi-specimen test plates.

Ability to operate TEM, SEM and EDS instruments.

Demonstrable commitment to good practice in data management.

The ability to communicate technical concepts and the logical “story” of the project is clearly written English.

Students are required to produce a thesis of no more than 80,000 words, with the research representing a significant new contribution to the discipline.