Advanced manufacturing and materials

Challenge: Develop a new cost-effective maintenance technique based on laser cladding technology to enhance the characteristics of new railways and track components and repair damage to ensure structural integrity, improve performance and enhance safety.

Solution: Using ANSTO instruments measurements of residual strain and residual stresses were undertaken on materials that have been repaired using the laser cladding technique.  From this the most suitable materials can be selected and processing parameters for laser cladding can be optimised based on this research and carry out full-scale field tests of the technology under service conditions.

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Challenge: Investigate a new organic plasma coating that enhances the production of bone-producing cells allowing implants to bind firmly to bone and decrease bone-implant rejections.

Solution: ANSTO’s accelerators were used to understand the role of energetic ion bombardment on growth mechanisms of plasma polymers by measuring the hydrogen content of the polymers using elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA). The study investigated the interface of the surface where the polymer film interacted with human tissue directly. The depth profile of hydrogen in thin polymer coatings revealed critical information about the biocompatibility of the polymer.

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Challenge: Granular materials are a unique form of matter that can behave as a solid, liquid or gas depending on the environmental conditions and in some cases they can both flow and support shear stress. The complex nature of these materials presents a number of challenges when conducting experiments involving granular materials.

Solution: ANSTO’s neutron instruments can be used to develop and verify numerical models for the behaviour of such granular materials. Unravelling the complex behaviour of granular matter is important to the pharmaceutical sector, agriculture and energy production as the flow, transport and storage of granular products such as medicine capsules, grain and coal are crucial for these industries.

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Challenge: Identify and explain the structural changes that occur during the production of carbon fibres in order to enhance the strength of the fibre.

Solution: Australian Synchrotron infrared data allows maps of chemical composition to be generated. This can provide insights into the chemical bonding within and around carbon fibres, and the mechanical performance of the carbon fibre composite. This information can help manufacturers improve the production process and lead to superior fibres.

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Challenge: Investigating a new class of materials with the potential to be used as an advanced, high-performing, environmentally-friendly and economical form of refrigeration.

Solution: The research found a colossal barocaloric effect in which significant cooling occurs under low pressure in a new class of ‘plastic crystals’. The study highlighted the tremendous potential of the new materials to be used as an alternative to current vapour compression refrigeration.

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Challenge: Assess the degree of accumulated damage in alloys by measuring defects stored in the material’s microstructure to determine the remaining life of components under various in-service operating conditions.

Solution: In an international collaboration, ANSTO used subatomic particle diffraction-based techniques to obtain complementary information about the crystal lattice defects (dislocations) stored by the material as a result of the applied load.

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Challenge: Conflux Technology uses additive manufacting to manufacture high performance heat exchangers for use in demanding applications such as aerospace, automotive, oil and gas, defence and industrial and more than 90% of their production is exported overseas. Because of the complexity, small feature sizes and large number of production variables, quality control and failure analysis can be challenging.
 

Solution: Using the Synchrotron in their quality control, Conflux is able to identify defects in their parts and optimise their production variables to eliminate those defects. Conflux are also using the Synchrotron for R&D on new part designs and to understand how changes to their processes affect the microstructure of their parts and to optimise the manufacturing process.

Challenge: Understanding the impact of cold-rolling (plastic deformation) on structural materials used in future Molten Salt Reactors (MSR), Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) and Thermal Energy Storage (TES) systems, which use molten salt as an energy transfer and energy storage medium.

Solution: An ANSTO-led international study found that microstructural (crystal) defects introduced during the cold-rolling process make the material stronger but also more susceptible to molten salt corrosion.

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Challenge: Develop new laser cleaning techniques to remove paint and corrosion from the Sydney Harbour Bridge that avoids damage such as residual stresses, micro-cracking or roughening to the Bridge’s 90-year-old steel that would decrease structural performance and surface integrity.

Solution: Using neutron techniques, the residual stress and fatigue strength properties of the Sydney Harbour Bridge were tested by ANSTO to determine the safest and most efficient way of laser cleaning the bridge.

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Challenge: Investigate the effectiveness of cold-spray repair technologies on repaired aircraft components.

Solution: Neutron diffraction was used to determine the residual stress relaxation in the cold-spray repaired components under fatigue loading.

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