Facilities

We have access to a growing number of resources in our labs and in facilities across the UK and beyond to provide you with the data and information required for your application.

We have a range of microscopes, cameras and optics to satisfy a range of microscopy needs from high resolution DIC to 3D surface scanning. Key equipment includes:
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• Motic AE2000MET Inverted Metallurgical Microscope with lens for 10x - 500x magnification
• Alicona Infinite Focus G4 3D Surface Profilometer
• Thorlabs Cerna Optical Microscope with 5x and 10x lens and an 8 Megapixel Digital Camera, motorised focusing and motorised XY Stages​

In partnership with ISAAC (School of Geographical and Earth Sciences), MCMP (School of Physics) & JWNC (School of Engineering

Our members include trained and experienced users across other university facilities for:
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• Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)
• Energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX)
• Electron BackScatter Diffraction (EBSD)
• Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)
• Raman spectroscopy

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Our range of full-scale to in-situ mechanical testing frames has been used for metals, polymers and natural materials. Some key equipment includes:
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• Zwick Roell Z250 (250 kN), screw-driven with an environmental chamber also available
• Zwick Roell Z2.0 (2 kN), servo-hydraulic, suitable for low load fatigue
• Instron 3367 Dual column 30kN universal (static screw driven) testing machine
• Deben 5kN Dual Leadscew microtester (200N and 5000N loadcells)​

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We have a whole range of equipment and consumables to prepare most medium to high toughness materials for microscopy or in-situ microscopy; these include:
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• Struers LaboForce-50 for Grinding and Polishing (down to 0.25um)
• Struers CitoPress-1  for hot mounting in bakelite or clear resin
• Kit for cold-mounting in resin
• Struers Minitom equipped with diamond cutting wheels for high-precision, low-deformation sectioning
• Buehler Vibromet for vibratory polishing

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We can alter the microstructure of as-provided materials, age or anneal specimens in open air, vacuum and inert atmospheres. Our latest additions to the heat treatment cell include:
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• Carbolite Gero Tube Furnace (with vacuum pump, 1500 °C)
• Carbolite Gero Tube Furnace (with argon environment, 1200 °C)
• Ramsell LAC PKE Hardening chamber furnace PKE 18/12 with SKM Hardening Table (Max Temp 1280°C)

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We have a small range of FDM 3D Printers for the prototyping of simple tools, moulds and accessories for our experiments; these include:

• Zortrax M300
• Ultimaker S3
• Choc Creator 2.0 Plus, dedicated to the extrusion of metal powder/thermoplastic mixes/pastes

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In partnership with CHESS (Cornell University)

We have experience with synchrotron experiments at CHESS and utilisation of advanced in-situ x-ray diffraction techniques to obtain:
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• Lattice strain measurements
• 3D X-ray diffraction microscopy (3D-XRDM) data

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We have direct and indirect access to an extensive range of computational facilities, including some in partnership with GCEC (School of Engineering). Some are:

• School of Engineering cluster: 444 cores, Intel Xeon nodes up to 2.83 GHz, 2-9GB memory per core
• Group Workstations (several available): 28-32 cores, 64GB RAM, 4GB GPU per stand-alone node
  
• ARCHIE-WeSt: 3048 cores, 8 large memory nodes with 512GB RAM, 8 GPU servers