PhD in Optimisation of Liquid Metal Filtration and Cleanliness in Nickel Based Superalloys, with Rolls-Royce and DigitalMetal CDT

A four year PhD with integrated studies is available in the High Temperature Research Centre, School of Metallurgy and Materials under the supervision of Prof Nick Green and Prof Roger Reed, with a tax free stipend of £25,780 per year.

This project is co-sponsored by the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Transformation of the Metals Industry (DigitalMetal) and Rolls-Royce plc with co-supervision by Dr Mark Hardy. The industry aligned EPSRC DigitalMetal CDT offers a four year training programme on integrating data driven with physics-based models of products equipping students with the knowledge and skills to traverse multiple domains.

The project will be based at the High Temperature Research Centre (HTRC). The HTRC is a joint collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Rolls-Royce plc. It enables production scale research and experimentation to deliver rapid high-quality product and process innovation and is a unique casting, design, simulation and advanced manufacturing research facility. In recent years successes of the partnership have been recognised through award of the Bhattacharyya Award (2022) and Queen’s Anniversary Prize (2023). Co-located academics, researchers and engineers collaborate shoulder-to-shoulder to drive innovation for more sustainable aviation.

Nickel base superalloys are at the heart of the turbines powering aeroengines and operate with exceptional reliability and durability, attributes realised through both material integrity and manufacturing process capability. Birmingham has long-standing research excellence in liquid metal cleanliness and shape casting, linking processing-structure-properties to realise real-world impact in performance and manufacturing yields.

This project seeks to reduce the rates of occurrence and maximum sizes of oxide inclusions in nickel-based superalloys during vacuum induction melting of superalloy feedstocks, with the objective of further advancing turbine system performance. This builds on previous experimental and computational research in Birmingham that has described and quantified the effects of oxides on material reliability, developed methods for prediction of their formation and rules for avoiding their occurrence.

The aims of this project are to:

• Develop a modelling method that resolves interactions between inclusions transported in fluid flows and their capture within a filter using lagrangian and discrete particle methods, and to develop tools for interpretation of model outputs.
• To apply models to discover filter structures / geometries for which the predicted filtration efficiency has been optimised.
• To undertake laboratory scale experimentation and characterisation of filtration efficiency across a range of conditions and validate model predictions by developing an automated image analysis tool.
• To understand the sensitivity of filter performance to flow conditions arising during bulk liquid processing and determine how they can be integrated effectively in to systems for production of the feedstocks required for superalloy component manufacture.