News and Events
 

Success for Engineering Students at Jules Byrnes Student Seminar Evening

On the 30^th of November the annual NSW Branch Materials Australia Jules Byrnes Student Seminar Evening was held at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). 

The presentation night featured both a poster competition and an oral competition between students from the University of Wollongong, University of Technology, University of New South Wales, and University of Sydney.

The First Prize in the oral competition was awarded to Stefan Griesser, a PhD student from UOW’s Engineering Materials Institute (EMI) supervised by Professor Rian Dippenaar. The title of Stefan’s winning presentation was “The use of high temperature laser scanning confocal microscopy as a tool to increase the quality and productivity of automotive steel”. This presentation was based on his findings using an experimental technique he developed for high-temperature laser-scanning confocal microscopy in order to investigate selected microstructural phase transitions during the casting of automotive steels. The peritectic phase transition is the cause of a variety of problems in steel plants all over the world and forces the industry to cast these steels a lower productivity compared to other steel grades. Based on his findings Stefan is now able to give a detailed explanation of the root cause of these problems and work towards solving problems encountered with these steels, resulting in increased productivity. 

First place in the poster competition was awarded to EMI PhD student, Iis Aisyah for her poster titled “Electric Discharge Assisted Mechanical Milling – New Process for Synthesis of ZrBN and TiBN” Iis Aisyah’s supervisors are Professor Rian Dippenaar and Dr David Wexler. The runner-ups were also from UOW, Azrin Chowdhury from Institute of Superconducting Electronic Materials (ISEM) and Irin Sultana from Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI).

 
Jules Byrne Award Winner - Stefan Griesser

Poster Winners - Azrin Chowdhury and Iis Aisyah

Chemica Paper Award

From left to right: Dr Robert Nightingale (BlueScope Steel), Dr Michael Chapman (BlueScope Steel) and Assoc. Prof. Brian Monaghan (University of Wollongong) showing their John A Brodie Medal for the best paper in the discipline of chemical engineering presented at the Chemeca 2011 Conference.

Dr Michael Chapman, Dr Robert Nightingale and Assoc. Prof. Brian Monaghan were awarded the John A Brodie Medal, at Chemeca 2011 Conference, by Institution of Engineers, Australia, for the best paper in the discipline of chemical engineering.  Their paper titled, Influence of Coke Ash on Blast Furnace Hearth Behaviour, represents the culmination of knowledge Michael Chapman developed in his PhD at the University of Wollongong and its application to improving our understanding of the blast furnace ironmaking process.  Michael’s PhD work was sponsored by BlueScope Steel and carried out under the umbrella of the Engineering Materials Institute and the BlueScope Steel Metallurgy Centre.

More about the John A Brodie Medal (from the Chemeca website)

The John A Brodie Medal is named in honour of Mr J A Brodie, who was Chief Engineer with Union Carbide. He established the reputation as a leading industrial innovator in Australia, having been responsible for the design and construction of polyethylene film extrusion units, the manufacture of bakelite and a continuous crystallization plant known as the Brodie Purifier. He won several international awards for his inventions, and he also won the Prince Philip Award for Australian Design. Mr Brodie was a Councillor of the Institution from 1967 to 1971.

This award is presented in conjunction with the annual Awards of Excellence in Chemical Engineering at the Chemeca Conference dinner.

Jessica Nowlan - Winner of AusIMM award

Ms Jessica Nowlan of the School of Mechanical, Materials and Mechatronics Engineering won the Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM) Lachlan and Illawarra Branches joint thesis presentation competition held on the 6/9/2011.  This involves students from ANU and UoW and it is the 4th year in a row that a Wollongong student has won. Jessica’s thesis titled, Flow of Molten Slag Through Narrow Coke Channels, is a PYRO Group/ BlueScope Metallurgy Centre project and her supervisor is Assoc. Prof Brian Monaghan.

Well done Jessica!

Engineering Materials Institute (EMI) Research Strength Workshop

On the 9th of June, 2011 the Engineering Materials Institute (EMI) Research Strength held a successful Workshop on Advanced Experimental Techniques for Materials Characterisation. More than 85 postgraduate students and researchers from UOW, UNSW, ANSTO, University of Sydney and BlueScope Steel have participated. The invited talks by external and internal speakers focussed on applications of synchrotron and neutron X-ray diffraction, transmission and scanning electron microscopy, electron back scattering diffraction (EBSD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, 3D FIB/EBSD and atom probe tomography.

The Workshop was opened by EMI Coordinator Prof. Elena Pereloma with a brief overview of the future Electron Microscopy Centre at the Innovation Campus to be operational by the end of 2011. Among the presenters were Director of the Bragg Institute at ANSTO Dr Rob Robinson, Drs Klaus-Dieter Liss and Saurabh Kabra from ANSTO, Associate Professor Julie Cairney and Mr Kevin Xie from the University of Sydney, Professor Michael Ferry and Dr Zachary Quadir from the UNSW, as well as Drs David Wexler, Azdiar Gazder, Ali Dehgani-Manshadi, Mr Mark Reid and Prof. Pereloma from the UOW.

In front Dr Klaus-Dieter Liss, ANSTO (left) in discussion with  Mr Les Moore (right) from BlueScope Steel	Dr Rob Robinson, ANSTO
A/Prof. Julie Cairney, University of Sydney	Prof. Michael Ferry, UNSW
Dr David Wexler, UOW	Dr Azdiar Gazder, UOW