Research in the Materials Performance Centre
The Centre undertakes generic and specific research programmes designed to understand, verify and quantify the performance and degradation of components as a result of heat, radiation, stress and corrosion and to develop methods to improve component lifetimes in chemical process and power plants.
As well as advancing our understanding of important materials issues, this has generated a sustainable skill and knowledge base and has developed a pool of experts in the performance of materials relevant to the nuclear and other power industries in the Northwest.
Research themes
Materials performance is fundamental to the nuclear industry in clean up and decommissioning, plant operation and life extension as well as potential new build and future Gen. IV reactor concepts. Research within the MPC is addressing all aspects of the nuclear lifecycle through five key technical themes:
Corrosion and Environmentally-Assisted Cracking
Understanding the corrosion mechanisms of materials in extreme environments over long time periods is providing the drive for new approaches, such as in-situ high resolution observation, to predict the relationship between environment, microstructure and mechanical loading.
Core Materials
Understanding the degradation of high temperature alloys and fuels in the nuclear reactor core is key to improving reactor efficiency and minimising nuclear waste. The MPC has a strong focus on zirconium alloy research, including microstructure and processing effects on mechanical properties and corrosion. Ceramic coatings for nuclear fuel particles for Gen. IV reactor designs are also being studied and optimised.
Nuclear Graphite
Understanding the relationship between graphite microstructure and properties and applying this understanding to model nuclear graphite behaviour through life is providing new input to support graphite performance in reactors and to assess decommissioning options.
Materials Modelling
Models of deformation and failure processes in materials are being developed alongside novel experimental approaches to improve the reliability of predictions of materials performance in service. Our high performance computer cluster has added impetus to model development over all scale-lengths - including crystal plasticity finite element methods and continuum mechanics (including weld and fracture modelling).
Structural Integrity
New developments in experimental and numerical techniques including surface strain mapping, weld modelling, residual stress characterisation and fracture modelling are enabling conservatisms in current assessment methods to be more fully understood.