Research Fellow in the aluminium group, Dr Baptiste Rouxel, together with students Steven Babaniaris and Katrin Mester recently attended a summer school on aluminium alloy technology at Trondheim in Norway.
Steve Babinaris waiting for the sun to set (about 11.30 pm) with Trondheim in the background.
The theme of the five-day school was to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in aluminium alloy technology. Lectures focused on basic metallurgy and mechanics controlling the evolution of microstructure and properties during industrial processing.
Steve Babaniaris describes the experience, “The whole course was really well structured with experts from both research and industry giving presentations. Many of the talks focused on the importance of collaboration between research centres and industry.
“The European aluminium producers and manufacturers all seem to have close working relationships with the universities and research centres, which means there is some really interesting fundamental work being done that also relates directly to a practical application in the industry.
“As I’ve been working on a project that looks at issues that occur during aluminium finishing due to microstructural imbalances that can occur during processing, the whole program proved extremely beneficial and I had some excellent discussions with many of the presenters and students there.”