The LightForm team welcomed 8 new PhD students over the last year, two at Imperial College London and six at Manchester.  

The students at Imperial will be carrying out research on creep forming and microstructure development during sideway extrusion of aluminium alloys. The students at Manchester will be working on topics such as the forming of aluminium alloys sheet with Novelis, modelling fatigue micro mechanics and cracking in aluminium in collaboration with Airbus, understanding dwell fatigue with Rolls-Royce, carrying out research on grain refinement in magnesium alloys with Luxfer, and carrying out advanced characterisation of lithium containing aluminium alloys.   

All these projects build on the fundamental characterisation and modelling tools developed during the first half of LightForm, and apply them to pressing problems of relevance to our industrial collaborators. We wish them all the best in their studies and look forward to hearing more about their research soon.