Centre for Engineering Materials (CEM)

Simulating materials for fusion and fission

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Wednesday, November 29th 2017
Sparck Jones Building SJ3/19
14:15 

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Abstract. Finding structural materials that can cope with the hostile environment of fusion and fission power plants is a famously difficult problem. In this talk I will describe work carried out over a number of years to understand some properties of defects in ferritic steels, and more recently in zirconium. Attention will be given to the computer models used, which are mostly quantum mechanical, and to the difficulties of capturing the important contribution made by magnetism and non-adiabatic effects.

Biography.  Andrew Horsfield joined the Materials Department at Imperial College in 2007 as an RCUK Fellow, is an honorary Research Fellow at the London Centre for Nanotechnology and a member of the Thomas Young Centre. His current research interests cover the dynamics of electrons out of equilibrium, and the thermodynamics of complex interfaces. Previous to this he was the Senior Research Fellow in charge of the theory core project for the IRC in Nanotechnology at UCL where he developed a novel scheme for non-adiabatic molecular dynamics (Correlated Electron-Ion Dynamics).

His interest in the interface between biology and physics was made possible by a Career Development Fellowship from the Institute of Physics which he received while working for the Fujitsu European Centre for Information Technology. His interest in efficient electronic structure methods and the development of two electronic structure codes (Plato and OXON) occurred while working in the Department of Materials at Oxford University with Prof. David Pettifor and Prof. Adrian Sutton. This built on his experience with tight binding while studying liquid silicon with Prof. Paulette Clancy at Cornell University as a PDRA and Junior Lecturer. He obtained his PhD in Physics from Cornell University.

All welcome to attend 

Enquiries to v.vishnyakov@hud.ac.uk