Taken together the imaging Facilities on the Rutherford Campus will be without equal anywhere in the world. The suite of synchrotron X-ray, neutron, laser, electron, lab. X-ray, and NMR imaging available promises an unprecedented opportunity to obtain information about material structure and behaviour. This infrastructure provides an opportunity to undertake science changing experiments. We need to be able to bring together the insights from different instruments to follow structural evolution under realistic environments and timescales to go beyond static 3D images by radically increasing the dimensionality of information available. This project will use many beamlines at Diamond and ISIS, combining them with laser and electron imaging capability on site, but especially exploiting the 3.3M investment by Manchester into a new imaging beamline at Diamond that will complete in Spring 2012.Traditionally a 3D images are reconstructed from hundreds or thousands of 2D images (projections) taken as the object is rotated. This project will:1) Deliver 3D movies of materials behaviour. 2) Move from essentially black and white images to colour images that reveal the elements inside the material and their chemical state which will be really useful for studying fuel cells and batteries.3) Create multidimensional images by combining more than one method (e.g. lasers and x-rays) to create an image. Each method is sensitive to different aspects.4) Establish an In situ Environments Lab and a Tissue Regeneration lab at the Research Complex. The former so that we can study sample behaviour in real time on the beam line; the latter so that we can study the cell growth and regeneration on new biomaterials. A key capability if we are to develop more effective hard (e.g. artificial hip) and soft tissue (artificial cartilage) replacements.These new methods will provide more detail about a very wide range of behaviours, but we will focus our experiments on materials for Energy and Biomaterials. In the area of energy it will enable us to:Recreate the conditions operating inside a hydrogen fuel cell (1000C) to find out how they degrade in operation leading to better fuel cells for cars and other applicationsStudy the charging and discharging of Li batteries to understand better why their performance degrades over their lifetime.Study thermal barriers that protect turbine blades from the aggressive environments inside an aeroengine to develop more efficient engines.Study the sub-surface corrosion of aircraft alloys and nuclear pressure vessels under realistic conditions improving safetyStudy in 3D how oil is removed from the pores in rocks and how we might more efficiently store harmful CO2in rocks.In the area of biomaterials it will enable us to recreate the conditions under which cells attach to new biomaterials and to follow their attachment and regeneration using a combination of imaging methods (laser, electron and x-ray) leading to:Porous hard tissue replacements (bone analogues) made from bio-active glasses with a microstructure to encourage cell attachmentSoft fibrous tissue replacements for skin, cartilage, tendon. These will involve sub-micron fibres arranged in ropes and mats.Of course the benefits of the multi-dimensional imaging we will establish at Harwell will extend much further. It will provide other academics and industry from across the UK with information across time and lengthscales not currently available. This will have a dramatic effect on our capability to follow behaviour during processing and in service.

The Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre (IMCRC) will undertake a wide variety of work in the Manufacturing, Construction and product design areas. The work will be contained within 5 programmes:1. Transforming Organisations / Providing individuals, organisations, sectors and regions with the dynamic and innovative capability to thrive in a complex and uncertain future2. High Value Assets / Delivering tools, techniques and designs to maximise the through-life value of high capital cost, long life physical assets3. Healthy & Secure Future / Meeting the growing need for products & environments that promote health, safety and security4. Next Generation Technologies / The future materials, processes, production and information systems to deliver products to the customer5. Customised Products / The design and optimisation techniques to deliver customer specific products.Academics within the Loughborough IMCRC have an internationally leading track record in these areas and a history of strong collaborations to gear IMCRC capabilities with the complementary strengths of external groups.Innovative activities are increasingly distributed across the value chain. The impressive scope of the IMCRC helps us mirror this industrial reality, and enhances knowledge transfer. This advantage of the size and diversity of activities within the IMCRC compared with other smaller UK centres gives the Loughborough IMCRC a leading role in this technology and value chain integration area. Loughborough IMCRC as by far the biggest IMRC (in terms of number of academics, researchers and in funding) can take a more holistic approach and has the skills to generate, identify and integrate expertise from elsewhere as required. Therefore, a large proportion of the Centre funding (approximately 50%) will be allocated to Integration projects or Grand Challenges that cover a spectrum of expertise.The Centre covers a wide range of activities from Concept to Creation.The activities of the Centre will take place in collaboration with the world's best researchers in the UK and abroad. The academics within the Centre will be organised into 3 Research Units so that they can be co-ordinated effectively and can cooperate on Programmes.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Additive Manufacturing (AM), also termed 3D printing, involves successively adding thin layers of new material formed by melting alloy powders or wires and solidifying them onto prior layers to construct 3D components. This process directly builds intricately shaped parts impossible to create using traditional techniques. Further, AM promises to be both more energy and materials efficient. Potential applications are far reaching, including biomedical, energy and aerospace. However, AM components can suffer from microstructural features that may lead to degraded properties, such as porosity and epitaxial grain growth. Porosity can form from gas bubbles entrained in the solidification front, leading to voids in the final built. Epitaxial grain growth occurs when new grains take on the crystal orientation of the previous layer, producing often undesirable direction dependent properties. We hope to control these features using magnetic fields acting on Thermoelectric (TE) currents. TE effects translate temperature variations at the junction of two conductive materials into electric current. They are well known in common applications such as Peltier coolers, TE generators for waste heat recovery and in thermocouples. In this proposal we aim use the interaction of thermoelectric currents and applied magnetic fields to generate fluid flow in the molten pool of metal that forms material in the AM process. This interaction is called Thermoelectric Magnetohydrodynamics, or TEMHD. Our feasibility studies indicate that TEMHD can transform the microstructure in AM components, preventing the formation of microstructural features such as porosity or epitaxial growth. We will show that thermoelectric effects are a natural and inherent part of AM processes, with high currents forming due to the huge thermal gradients encountered in AM. We will apply controlled external magnetic fields, causing these currents to interact and generate a Lorentz force that drives TEMHD flow. Our preliminary numerical predictions show that even a moderate magnetic field generated by permanent magnets is sufficient for TEMHD to dominate the melt pool hydrodynamics and that the flow magnitude is highly sensitive to the orientation and magnitude of the magnetic field. This sensitivity will enable us to modulate the heat, mass and momentum transport, enabling control of microstructural evolution, including epitaxial growth and gas entrainment. Our vision is to reveal the fundamental mechanisms that TEMHD introduces to AM and to then ultimately develop a pathway to exploit it in industrial applications producing improved and consistent material properties of components. To achieve these goals the investigators will employ state-of-the-art experimental and numerical modelling techniques. High speed in situ synchrotron X-ray radiography of the process will generate data for validation of the numerical model and provide benchmarks for the wider scientific community. The numerical model will capture the complex interactions in the melt pool and provide understanding of the complex physical mechanisms at work. Theoretical predictions from the model will guide the experimental programme, while direct observations will guide the numerical model development. With a validated numerical model, a parametric study of the magnetic field conditions along with key AM processing conditions will be conducted to determine conditions required to produce microstructures that give the properties required for each application. The ability to use TEMHD to design the microstructures will be demonstrated in the experimental programme. Throughout the project we will seek input from our industrial partners, and during the latter stages we will hold a workshop to develop translational pathways for scaling and implementing these techniques to the next generation of AM machines.

The chemistry of the troposphere underlies a range of environmental issues, which have substantial societal and economic impacts. Whether it is a changing climate, a reduction in air quality affecting human health or the degradation of ecosystems due to air pollution the details of the chemistry determines the severity of the impact. Numerical models of atmospheric chemistry are essential to our ability to understand, predict and hence mitigate these problems. The description of the chemistry occurring within these models is known as the 'mechanism'. Different models use different levels of chemical complexity in deriving these mechanisms, depending on their individual foci. However, there is an overarching need for a 'gold standard' or benchmark mechanism, which contains as full a representation of our fundamental 'state of science' understanding of atmospheric chemistry as is possible. For the last decade this benchmark mechanism, both in the UK and internationally, has been the Master Chemical Mechanism (MCM). The MCM provides a highly comprehensive representation of atmospheric volatile organic compound (VOC) degradation chemistry, which is extensively used by the atmospheric science community in a wide variety of science and policy applications where chemical detail is required. The MCM is an internationally recognised resource, with registered users worldwide, and thus represents a highly regarded flagship facility for atmospheric science in the UK. Much of its success stems from the availability of the MCM database on the web, along with the provision of a range of tools to facilitate its use. However, both the MCM itself and its supporting infrastructure are now becoming dated. It is clear that the enormous task of bringing the entire mechanism fully up to date, and maintaining it in that condition, is becoming increasingly difficult within the resources and methods that are currently available. It is recognised, therefore, that sustainable development of the MCM as a whole requires a fundamental revision in the methods applied to its maintenance to ensure that updates/changes can be carried out thoroughly and efficiently, and which can be more readily sustained through changes of personnel in the future. Without such changes, it is probable that the MCM will stagnate, gradually fall from use and eventually become obsolete, and hence no longer a highly regarded flagship facility for atmospheric science in the UK. The MAGNIFY project puts in place a comprehensive strategic work plan (including a number of important scientific deliverables) in order to make the MCM more sustainable, updating its construction rules and opening it up more to community, building upon its success and maintaining it as the "gold standard" benchmark mechanism for atmospheric chemistry. This proposal will: 1) build a fully updated and revised mechanism development protocol, for the generation of a new version of the MCM (v4.0) 2) put in place a range of quality assurance methods to ensure high quality updates and changes into the future 3) develop an international community tasked with supporting the continual development of the MCM mechanism and framework. 4) investigate automated methods for mechanism generation that will reduce workload and error, ensuring responsive, efficient generation of mechanisms into the future 5) further develop and enhance the successful open access web platform used by the MCM for access, archiving and interrogation not only of the MCM and its successors, but also a range of mechanisms used by a range of NERC / MO / DEFRA supported activities and for a range of models world wide 6) provide a comprehensive evaluation methodology of all mechanisms stored in the system against the updated benchmark MCM and its successors with an emphasis on assessing those models currently being used for policy (air quality and climate) related work within the UK.