Research

The Hub's research activities are divided into platform research that focuses on fundamental science and user-led research driven by our industrial partners. All of our activities are detailed and summarised in our Annual Report.

Download the Annual Report

Research Programme

The overall research programme of the Hub is illustrated below. Secondary Al containing inclusions and impurities is our starting material. Guided by thermodynamic assessment, we develop a novel multi-functional melt treatment process to deliver a refined Al melt with minimised inclusions, impurities and hydrogen content. Instead of further refining to eliminate the residual inclusions and impurity elements, our research approach is to mitigate their harmful effects on the chemical, physical and mechanical properties of recycled Al-alloys.

Our overall research programme is organised into two main research areas: platform research area and grand challenge research area (referred to as platform and grand challenge research themes in the original proposal). In our platform research area we minimise the harmful effects of inclusions and impurities through positive use of inclusions to enhance heterogeneous nucleation and through effective control of the crystal structure, morphology, size and distribution of intermetallic compounds (IMCs). In our grand challenge research area we maximise the performance of secondary Al-alloys through both process and alloy innovation. We also develop recycling-friendly Al-alloys and sustainable solidification processing technologies to facilitate closed-loop recycling.

Research Themes

Fundamental Research

The current fundamental research projects include:

A molecular dynamics study of structural templating during heterogeneous nucleation

Effect of physical and chemical properties of the substrate on prenucleation

Monte Carlo simulations of solute segregation at the liquid-substrate interface

Elemental adsorption at the solidsubstrate interface and its effect on heterogeneous nucleation

New progress on the understanding of heterogeneous nucleation and phase transformation of Fe containing intermetallics in Al alloys

Nucleation and growth crystallography of Mn-bearing intermetallics in magnesium alloys

The nature of native oxides in Mg with various alloying elements

Grain initiation maps

Prediction of grain size during solidification

Studying grain refinement in Al alloys using x-ray radiography and machine learning

Understanding intermetallic compound nucleation and growth using synchrotron x-ray radiography

The morphology and distribution of Al8Mn5 in high pressure die cast AZ91

An anti-trapping current for use in phase-field simulation with arbitrary (CALPHAD) thermodynamics

Phase field simulation of needle crystal growth

The critical factor for the iron tolerance limit in magnesium

To download the individual summaries please click on the title above or alternatively you can download all of LiME's research summaries in the LiME_Annual_Report_2018.

The LiME Hub's updated research themes can be found in the LiME Annual Report.