materials science
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- Sensors – The basic human need to know and understand your environment is of particular imperative to the Armed Forces. Defence is interested in the development of small, low-power, light-weight, multi-modal sensing capabilities for example to detect explosive and chemical substances, and radio frequency emissions.
- How can sensors and other advanced technologies in next generation police uniforms be powered efficiently in the field?
- Can quantum computing approaches to advanced material development provide lighter, stronger, safer, and more efficient batteries and hydrogen storage systems?
- How can we use digital innovation and precision farming techniques to measure animal health and welfare outcomes for livestock, and to provide early warning of livestock disease and health threats?
- Applications of bonded dissimilar materials in many industries are increasing, but it is necessary to evaluate the failure strength of such bonding.
- Depleted uranium (DU) has surprising physical properties such as a high density, high hardness, and high toughness.
- Brittle materials such as semiconductors, ceramics, glasses, piezoelectric etc.
- The term phase field has recently become known across many fields of materials science.
- Nacre continues to be an inspiration for the fabrication of strong and tough materials from renewable and earth-abundant raw materials.
- Friction surfacing (FS) is one of the ideal solid-state cladding processes.
- High-damping materials are widely used in engineering fields, but in order to increase the precision of vibration control to different levels, high-damping materials with high-rigidity are required.
- The simplification of fabrication processes that can define very fine patterns for large-area flexible radio-frequency (RF) applications is very desirable because it is generally very challenging to realize submicron scale patterns on flexible substrates.
- Due to increasing improvement of weaponry and ammunition, attention is being given to the development of new materials that could more effectively resist to ballistic impact.
- Light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) are attractive candidates for low-cost light-emitting devices fabricated using solution-based processes on flexible substrates.
- Although x-ray tomography is commonly used to characterize the three-dimensional structure of materials, sometimes this is impractical due either to limited time for data collection (such as in rapidly-evolving systems) or the need to limit the radiation exposure of the sample.
- Recent challenges faced by humanity in relation to the ongoing climatic changes around the globe, have led many practitioners and researchers search for new environmentally friendly materials to use in construction, such as earth-based materials.
- Impingement of energetic particles/ions on material surfaces is of great interest as these impacts give rise to various interesting phenomena, such as sputtering, back-scattering, crater formation, emission of electrons and photons from material surfaces etc.
- The lack of experimental data and/or limited experimental information concerning both surface and transport properties of liquid alloys often require the prediction of these quantities.
- Hot-rolled sheets from Zr-2,5%Nb alloys, used by production of responsible construction elements for nuclear reactors, are characterized by the layer-by-layer inhomogeneity of texture and structure, which reduces the stability of sheet properties and therefore ought to be minimized.
- Negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) materials have drawn significant interest because the enhanced toughness, shear resistance, and vibration absorption that typically are seen in auxetic materials may enable a range of novel applications.
- Assuring the integrity of documents (possibly electronic), for example involving distributed ledger technology and advances in materials.
- Evaluate the technologies that will drive terabit networks: supporting the development of next-gen fibre technology, leveraging opto-electronics, encoding and graphene expertise to deploy a terabit network.
- Self-sustaining forces - When the UK deploys forces overseas it has to ensure that they are supported by an appropriately robust and effective logistics infrastructure that ensures the timely delivery of consumables and other materiel. MOD is interested in all aspects of technology, or alternative ways of working, that minimise the logistic infrastructure particularly that exposed to risk. Interests span technology for reducing the logistic footprint itself for example through the use of renewable or alternative energy sources, through to the use of additive manufacturing that might reduce the need for a large holding of spares in-theatre.
- Simulants for safe detection equipment testing and canine training Identification of CBRNE materials.
- Ubiquitous sensing and processing - in the future, sensors will become smaller and cheaper leading to their wide availability both in civilian applications and in defence. They will also be available to our adversaries. How they are deployed and how the information they generate is managed and used will be key. We need to understand how they will be networked and how automation could be exploited to task and manage them.
- How can sensors be embedded in police uniforms and what functionality might they be able to provide? For example, greater environmental and situational awareness, such as through identifying the presence of narcotics, pollutants or CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) contamination.
- What advanced materials could be exploited by policing for lightweight, multi-functional, well-fitting personal protective equipment?
- Affordable space – How can Defence achieve affordable access to space? How can we harness advances in the commercial sector and maximise our use of space based services? How do we improve our situation awareness of space? Where are the opportunities to reduce the size, weight and power of space based capabilities?
- How could modern materials and construction techniques be used to improve both the safety and, through weight reduction, the productivity of dangerous goods tanks?
- How can we develop and exploit new methodologies to ensure cost-effective monitoring (for example remote sensing and environmental DNA)?
- How does the performance of materials and structures change over time? Can this be accurately predicted and measured in service? How does this impact on the thresholds for safety (remnant life etc.)?
- Materials and structures – Understanding material selection and performance, ageing, shock and impact resistance, corrosion, design and lifeing aimed towards reducing the long term cost of military equipment across a range of platforms, weapons and application areas. How do we pull through promising materials quickly and at low enough cost to enable early adoption?
- What is the best way to inspect traditional and modern joining methods to identify flaws that could compromise the safety of tanks constructed using such methods?