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Layers of various circular materials

Re-imagining Our Relationship with Materials

... you are, take a moment to look around and count how many materials you can see… How far did you get before you ... before you start to consider composites, where multiple materials are brought together and combined to make new ones. How did so many materials come to surround us, performing all kinds of useful ...

Multiferroics

... of Oxford and he uses the beamline to study a class of materials known as multiferroics. These are materials that respond to both magnetic and electric fields, ... media in the future. Paolo explains more about these materials. Paolo - Essentially multiferroics are materials ...

Sinclair 48K ZX Spectrum motherboard (Issue 3B. 1983) (Manufactured 1984)

Multiferroics for Magnetic Data

... of Oxford and he uses the beamline to study a class of materials known as multiferroics. These are materials that respond to both magnetic and electric fields, ... as Paolo explains... Paolo - Essentially multiferroics are materials that can be addressed using two different fields. ...

Hands holding a big, green leaf

The search for sustainable materials

What else does the future hold for materials science? Well with a rising world population ... pressure on our resources, a major priority is to produce materials sustainably and also make the most efficient use ... at Materiom , an open knowledge platform for making materials from locally abundant bio-based ingredients. But ...

A potter working some clay on a wheel.

Handmade: materials and the art of crafting

Joining Chris Smith for this programme: materials scientist Anna Ploszajski. She's the author of a ... realisation that really, I didn't know very much about materials at all. And this was brought about by a visit to a ... called the Institute of Making at UCL, where they have a materials library full of about a thousand different ...

Plane Wing

Can we make self-healing materials?

Once they’re made, materials can’t grow, or adapt, or repair themselves if they get damaged. But, perhaps, future materials will be able to heal themselves. Richard Trask from Bristol University is developing self repairing materials and he began by explaining to Izzie Clarke the ...

A Rolls-Royce Trent900 Jet Engine

New Metals in Jet Engines

... like Rolls Royce are constantly searching for materials that will enable their engines to run at higher ... more quietly and give out more power.  I met Dave Rugg, Materials Specialist for Rolls Royce under an enormous Trent ... do? Dave -   There's a very wide range of loads that the materials are subject to.  For turbine blades, obviously, ...

The field from a permanent magnet

The Materials and Magnetism Beamline

... magnetic fields which can be permanently found in certain materials, or else induced in others causing the attraction ... Collins is the Principal Beamline Scientist on Diamond's Materials and Magnetism Beamline and he gave me an introduction to the properties and features of magnetic materials. Steve - The most obvious and well known form of ...

human body image

Biomaterial Implants

Materials science is what it says on the tin – the science behind materials. Researchers are striving to engineer better materials that improve efficiency, reduce cost and reduce ...

Shipping boats

Sustainable ships better for marine life

... when they’re scrapped, but new approaches and composite materials to replace steel – still popular due to its ... in marine activities in Madrid, Spain. ‘Many of these materials are extremely degraded and useless but some of them are used as an important source of raw materials on these continents.’ Building ships that are ...

Rolls Royce Jet engine turbine blade

Making Metals Take the Heat

... temperatures that vary from -50°C up to 2000°C. Finding materials able to withstand these conditions is already ... the hotter an engine runs, the race is on to find materials that are able to handle even harsher environments ... conditions requires the use of a special class of materials because most ordinary metals would simply melt ...

Shrouded blades in a jet engine

Beyond Mere Metals

With the precision design of superalloy materials (as written about here by David Collins and Bryce Conduit) , we are able to manufacture materials capable of withstanding the extreme conditions ... temperatures routinely exceed 1500°C and the loads on the materials have more momentum than a family car flung three ...

CSI Swansea

... This is a scenario we've set up at Swansea University's Materials Research Centre to bring the popularity of ... like Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) to the world of materials science. Our aim is to galvanise and engage the interests of 11-18 year olds who are the materials scientists of tomorrow. To solve our fictional ...

a photo of a plastic cup in the surf

Are "biodegradable" plastics just greenwashing?

... that we have to be really careful about when we talk about materials, but also things that are good and bad for the ... important to think about what is it that we want these materials to do, because I think when we talk about things ... on our natural environment. The holy grail really for materials is that they exist in what we call a circular ...

Life Cycle of Rubbish

... -  Now one way to deal with rubbish is to use the right materials in the first place. In other words, things that we ... more easily. And Dr John Williams is the Polymers and Materials Manager at the National Non-Food Crops Centre where ... including things like recycling and then the disposal of materials when they're no good anymore. He's with us ...

Virginia-class attack submarine in the Atlantic Ocean.

Bomb-proof materials

... causing injury? Cambridge engineer Graham McShane works on materials designed to fend off bomb blasts by ... Graham - So, the key thing in developing protective materials is to control the forces that are transmitted to ... vehicle. Our research is looking at the use of cellular materials to achieve this. Chris - When you say 'cellular', ...

Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer - tailfin of a remote controlled helicopter.

Self-Sensing, Self-Healing Materials

... Frank Jones from Sheffield University who's developing materials which are capable of self-sensing and self-healing. ... of all, what do we mean by self-sensing and self-healing materials? Frank - Self-sensing is largely to do with the ... crack when it forms. This is the general idea about these materials. Helen - First off, what sort of damage can they ...

Circular pattern in metal

Supply chains: building EV batteries

... Arnold Tukker from Leiden University, starting with what materials we need to think most carefully about, and Fully ... nickel, there is cobalt, manganese, and these are really materials you need in large volumes Eva - And do we have enough of these materials in general? Arnold - Are the materials there? ...

Metals for Nuclear Reactor

New materials to make fusion feasible

New technologies also often require new materials to cope with the demands engineers are placing upon ... the heart of the process, means our present generation of materials can’t cut it, and we need to discover where they ... the influence of how we're running the reactor on the materials surface's performance. We're looking there at the ...

Skull 3d printed in polylactic acid (PLA)

Medical Materials

... broken bones. Ruth - Well what we're doing is to develop materials that are designed to replace body tissue such as ... should think? Ruth - Exactly. Chris - Serena, what sort of materials are you developing to make that happen? Serena - Well we're looking at materials that are available at the moment and most of the ...

Creating Bomb-proof Curtains

... as typhoons and hurricanes.  The project uses auxetic materials and is led by Professor Ken Evans at the University ... getting thinner as it was getting longer.  Well auxetic materials do exactly the opposite.  When you pull them they ... is about blast mitigation.  It's about using auxetic materials to make a textile which we can then produce a ...

Cartoon schematic of an atom

Probing the Properties of Materials

... Ben -   Is there a quota that we must do this much materials, this much biology, this much basic physics, or is ... -   Well, our big interest is in how the properties of materials are determined by the two aspects that Martyn ... Martin -   Well in the end, macroscopic properties or materials are determined exactly by what goes on at an atomic ...

Rolls-Royce engine front bearing housing produced by 3-d printing: it's the largest aero engine structure to fly, incorporating ALM components, in the world to-date.

How to print a Jet Engine

3D printing, or the printing of materials layer-by-layer to form a 3D shape, has emerged as a ... extreme precision and are usually made from custom-made materials, including specialist alloys . In the case of the ... experiencing the hottest temperatures, a class of materials known as superalloys is used. Superalloys are ...

Calcite crystal

New technique to tell whether rocks are man-made or naturally occuring.

... out what the differences are in the crystal structure of materials such as calcite.  Now calcite can appear naturally ... Christine -   Well I've always had an interest in materials and usually spent time trying to understand how to ... of material characterisation techniques to archaeological materials.  And so, what brought Steffano and I to this ...

Damaged road

Pothole project developing smarter roads for the future

... it even gets started, using new self-healing road surface materials and embedding sensors in the roads to make the job ... how? Ioannis - That's where our colleagues in the smart materials area come in. We have effectively autonomous ... team of people on the robotics front as well as the smart materials end who are trying to come up with a multipurpose ...