An international expert in the performance of materials under extreme environments, Prof Michael Preuss, will deliver a Distinguished Lecture at ANSTO on 9 April.
In the lecture, Prof Preuss will highlight his research on zirconium-alloys, the cladding material of choice for encapsulating nuclear fuel in water-cooled nuclear reactors.
He is interested in how microstructure, mechanical properties and residual stresses in structural materials contribute to performance.
Prof Preuss is Director of MIDAS, a new program related to degradation mechanisms of zirconium-based nuclear fuel cladding, Deputy Director of the Nuclear Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre at the University of Manchester. He also leads the Materials Systems for Demanding Environment within the Henry Royce Institute at the UK’s National Institute for Materials Science Research and Innovation.
Highlighting his research, Prof Preuss will describe the degradation mechanisms in zirconium-based fuel cladding, particularly focusing on the use of synchrotron x-ray diffraction and scattering for investigating corrosion mechanisms in reactor environments.
As chair of the Scientific Advisory Council for the European Spallation Source, he will also provide a brief outlook on developments in neutron scattering for materials engineering at this facility as well as future of neutron scattering research in Europe.
Prof Preuss obtained his PhD from the Technical University Hamburg-Harburg and joined the University of Manchester in 1999. In 2003, he was appointed as Lecturer in Materials Performance and became a core member of the Materials Performance Centre, which focuses on nuclear materials research. He was appointed as Chair in Metallurgy in 2010 and has served on a number of scientific advisory boards at large scale research facilities. In addition to his role at ESS, Prof Preuss is a SAC member of UK’s Neutron and Muon Source ISIS.