IFM postdoctoral researchers, Dr Steven Babaniaris, Dr Nima Hagdadi and Dr Subhankar Biswas (Shuvo) recently returned from an international teaching trip to the Wuhan University of Science and Technology (WUST) in the Hubei province of China.

The IFM team enjoying Hubei style hot pot, courtesy of the students of WUST.

The trip was part of a long standing partnership between the two universities, where Deakin staff teach the engineering program collaboratively with the lecturers at WUST with the goal of providing an alternative and international perspective on their studies.

As well as teaching, Steven, Nima and Shuvo visited and presented their work at the International Research Institute for Steel Technology at WUST, the Hanzhong University of Science and Technology and the research and development department of the Baosteel group.

The IFM team also thoroughly enjoyed the local Wuhan cuisine under the guidance of their students, including hot pot, the sticky rice breakfast dish – Doupi, and the world renowned hot dry noodles. Steven’s attempts to return the favour by letting his students try the Australian breakfast staple Vegemite were less successful!

Dr Thomas Dorin featured in an article about the use of scandium in light-weight alloys on the create website recently.

The article, talks about the research with CleanTeq and Universal Alloy Corporation and the potential for small amounts of scandium to have a major impact on the properties of aluminium alloys. Read more

IFM is leading a new project to lighten electric bus bodies, supported by the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre.

Australian bus manufacturer and IFM industry partner Volgren is a partner in the new project, led by Dr Thomas Dorin, to investigate how scandium could help lighten electric bus bodies. The other partner is Clean Teq, which mines scandium in Australia.

The Bus Optimisation Project is said to provide, “an opportunity to incorporate the latest thinking in metallurgical engineering with future bus design and advanced manufacturing techniques.”

Peter Dale, CEO of Volgren, said as the global market for electric buses expands significantly, a lighter bus body will be a game changer, improving both range and capacity.

Mr Dale said the Bus Optimisation Project was initiated after Volgren approached Deakin with the challenge of removing up to a tonne of weight from their popular low-floor city bus, Optimus. This, they knew, would be a difficult task considering Volgren already boasts the lightest aluminium bus body of its type in Australia – and arguably the world.

“Deakin’s extensive capabilities in design, forming and metal alloy development have placed them at the forefront of metallurgical engineering.”.

“Their researchers have already had success incorporating scandium into the aeronautic sector and we believe that expertise can form the foundation of the next generation of Volgren aluminium bus designs,” said Peter Dale.

The partnership between Volgren and Deakin also includes a PhD scholarship, to ensure that the research remains grounded in industry application. Read more

Congratulations to IFM student, Katrin Mester who has received an AINSE postgraduate research award.

The award provides  a stipend of $7500 per year and covers her trips to ANSTO. Katrin’s project is Understanding the co-precipitation mechanisms of Al3(Sc,Zr) with Li-containing phases in Al-Cu-Li model alloys supervised by Dr Thomas Dorin.

Dr Thomas Dorin recently gave a presentation at the International Conference on Extrusion and Benchmark (Aluminium 2000) in Verona, Italy. Dr Dorin’s talk on ‘Impact of scandium and zirconium on extrudability, microstructure and hardness of a binary Al-Cu alloy’ presented results from his ARC Linkage project with CleanTeq. The research shows that hardness is almost doubled in the alloy containing both scandium and zirconium compared to the binary alloy. Read more.

The conference dinner was held in a palace near Verona.