Multiscale fracture simulations: PhD President Scholarship for Engineering Infrastructure Challenges for 2020 -

Understanding
material failure : Multiscale fracture models for silicon wafer manufacturing

Attention: This award is prestigious and reserved to TOP students.

The award will cover
tuition fees at the Home/EU fee rate and will provide a stipend at the UK
Research Council rate (£13,590 in 2010/11) plus an enhancement of at least
£1,000 per annum.  

The studentship is open to
United Kingdom (UK) or European Union (EU) candidates only. If you
are NOT EU and UK please contact Prof. Stéphane P.A. BORDAS: stephane
dot bordas at gmail dot com since we have other topics available.

The phenomena behind material failure have kept researchers
in check for decades. Wear and degradation of structures causes pecuniary and
human losses and any advance in their understanding is important.

But failure can also have positive effects.  Inspired by the nuclear industry where hydrogen
bombardment (ionisation) leads to material degradation, Soitec SA have
engineered a revolutionary process to increase the quality of silicon wafers.
This technology, known as the SmartCut™ process relies on actually utilizing
fracture to improve manufacture.

Although the SmartCut™ Process has been in use for nearly 20
years, the fundamentals behind it remain unclear and it is still difficult for
engineers to predict the topology of the fracture surface which is key to the
quality of the end product. This will be the main aim of the project.

This aim can only be achieved by developing new methods for
the simulation of the onset of the initiation propagation and coalescence of
cracks in the structure.  The
project’s objectives are as follows:

•                  Predict
the roughness of the surface obtained by the SmartCut™ process

•                  Accurately
predict the initiation of the micro cracks (nucleation point, direction)

•                  Accurately
predict the multiple micro crack paths until coalescence

•                  Explain
the deviation of the crack inside the bulk of the material as a function of material
and interfacial properties 

 
The award will cover
tuition fees at the Home/EU fee rate and will provide a stipend at the UK
Research Council rate (£13,590 in 2010/11) plus an enhancement of at least
£1,000 per annum. 

 

The studentship is open to
United Kingdom (UK) or European Union (EU) candidates only. If you are NOT EU and UK please contact Prof. Stéphane P.A. BORDAS: stephane dot bordas at gmail dot com since we have other topics available.

The student will join a group of 6 PhD students and two post-docs in the Institute for Modelling and Simulation in Mechanics and Materials http://www.engin.cf.ac.uk/research/resInstitute.asp?InstNo=13 composed of 11 academics working in theoretical applied and computational mechanics. 

 DETAILS FOR APPLICATIONS:  http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/engin/degreeprogrammes/research/presidents-sch…

Good luck!

Stéphane P.A. BORDAS