News – mineAlloy

Developing materials with exceptional abrasion resistance

NiHard-4 and high-Cr-Mo white cast irons are extensively used in mining and mineral processing applications. The microstructure and mechanical properties of these abrasion resistant materials are highly sensitive to the chemical composition and heat treatment conditions. A mineAlloy team led by researchers at University of Queensland (Maziar Jokari...

Improving the microstructure and properties of high chromium cast iron

mineAlloy researchers at University of Queensland have recently published an article on the Effect of TiB2 additions on the microstructure and mechanical properties of a hypereutectic high chromium cast iron. The research team used TiB2 to reduce the average size and aspect ratio of primary carbides with the ultimate goal of improving the mechanica...

Writing papers with impact

Prof Peter Hodgson delivered a workshop on “Writing papers with impact” to mineAlloy students and researchers. The workshop took place at Deakin Waurn Ponds campus and several researchers connected remotely over Zoom. The presentation covered all aspects of scientific publications, from identifying a suitable journal and audience, to writing a ...

Weir – UQ: visit and internships

A delegation from Weir Minerals visited University of Queensland earlier this year to discuss the progress of their mineAlloy projects. The projects are dedicated to high chromium white cast irons and high manganese Hadfield steels and researchers at UQ have recently made a couple of breakthroughs, which resulted in the filing of two provisional pa...

MIT 2020 Alloy Design Workshop

Prof Christopher Hutchinson, from Monash University, delivered a talk at the 2020 Alloy Design Workshop hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on 4th December 2020. The workshop had an impressive line-up, including: Prof Hugo Sandim (University of Sao Paulo), Prof Zhaoping Lu (University of Science and Technology Beijing), Prof G...

mineAlloy annual meeting 2020

The mineAlloy training centre held its annual meeting on 24th November 2020 in a rather unusual setting. Given the travel restrictions and the social distancing rules in effect at the time of the meeting, the attendees connected remotely, from their home office or from geographically dispersed meeting rooms, through a videoconferencing platform. ...

2nd mineAlloy workshop on computational thermodynamics and kinetics

mineAlloy hosted the 2nd Workshop on Computational Thermodynamics and Kinetics on Tuesday 24th November 2020. The event was attended by more than 50 students and researchers from academia and industry. Dr Richard Ball represented ThermoCalc, who supported this event, and he provided a summary of the recent improvements in the software and the therm...

Pioneering friction stir additive manufacturing of steels

Dr Ehsan Farabi has recently joined the mineAlloy team at Deakin University. Ehsan is a physical metallurgist with interest in developing processing-structure-property links for advanced structural materials, mainly steels and titanium alloys. He has expertise in state-of-the-art characterisation techniques, such as electron microscopy (SEM), elect...

Chun Kit completes project on direct laser deposition of WC/Co

Chun Kit Sit has submitted his Master’s thesis on Direct Laser Deposition (DLD) of WC/Co cermets as wear-resistant coatings. WC/Co cermets are composite materials composed of tungsten carbide (ceramic) in a cobalt binder (metallic). WC/Co cermets are especially hard and wear resistant but their traditional manufacturing processes are expensive. ...

Refinement of primary carbides in hypereutectic high-chromium cast irons

mineAlloy researchers from University of Queensland and Weir Minerals have recently published a review paper on the refinement of primary carbides in hypereutectic high-chromium cast irons. High-chromium cast irons (HCCIs) are widely used in mining, minerals and cementation industries. The large volume fraction of coarse primary carbides (M7C3) imp...

Postdoc in Advanced Characterisation

Dr Jiangting Wang is a research fellow and FIB-SEM manager at the Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University. He is specialised in advanced material characterisation, such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD), focused-ion beam (FIB), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and atom probe tomograp...

Running DEM simulations at the National Computational Infrastructure

The researchers of mineAlloy, Vadim Zolotarevskiy and Michael Pereira, have been recently granted with access to the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). The NCI facility operates Gadi - the most powerful Australian supercomputer. Gadi, that was launched in the beginning of 2020 and already ranked as 24th in the TOP500 list of the global su...