Imperial research to develop safer nuclear reactors and more fuel-efficient vehicles gets a boost, thanks to new Fellowships awarded this month.

Dr Britton’s Fellowship will enable him to carry out research into materials that are better able to withstand the harsh environments of nuclear reactors. Dr Pimenta’s will use her Fellowship for research into more environmentally friendly and cost-effective composite materials for potential use in automotive manufacturing.

Professor Jeff Magee, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial, said: “Initiatives such as the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Research Fellowships provide a vital alternative avenue for our academics to get the financial kick-start they need to nurture their research. I congratulate our new Fellows Ben and Soraia and I look forward to seeing their research careers blossom. ”

Better materials for safer reactors

The UK’s increasing demand for electricity looks set to continue into future decades. The consequent need for low carbon energy is driving a renaissance of nuclear power, with two new plants being commissioned at Hinkley Point in England.

New Fellow Dr Ben Britton aims to develop materials that are able to better withstand the harsh environment of a nuclear reactor. This will ensure greater safety and better performance of new reactors and assist with safe life extension of the existing fleet.

In particular, Dr Britton will study two alloys generally used to build reactor cladding, tubing and heat exchangers. Combining techniques that can measure deformations on a microscopic scale with conventional mechanical testing, Dr Britton will develop models that predict how to process these alloys and how they perform in harsh environments over long periods of time.

New carbon-fibre composites to improve manufacturing

There is an increasing need by manufacturers for new fibre-based composite materials to replace steel and aluminium in automotive construction and compete with the composites currently used in aerospace. This could lower both manufacturing costs and the environmental impact of vehicles.

Fibre-based composites are materials made up of a reinforcement of fibres embedded in a matrix of other materials. The reinforcement confers additional properties on the material, such as increased rigidity or strength, but assembling the material is a complex process.

Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow Dr Soraia Pimenta is working on a new family of fibre-based composites, called discontinuous fibre composite (DFC). These are reinforced by randomly oriented bundles of fibres that include carbon and recycled or natural fibres. The advantage of DFCs is that they can be moulded into complex shapes, making them more cost effective and time efficient for manufacturers. However, engineers currently do not have the ability to predict how they will perform under different circumstances.

Dr Pimenta is developing mathematical models to assist engineers in designing and predicting the behaviour of structures that are manufactured using this new material. Her new models will also help to optimise the mechanical properties of this new family of composites.