SMNZI award winners 2022 First Place: Regan Ding Project Title: The effect of heat treatment on plasma sprayed Titanium Carbonitride coatings Second Place: Juliet Shepherd Project Title: The Optimization of Block Copolymer Self-assembly Abstract for first place: ABSTRACT Thermal spray is a relatively new technique for applying wear-resistant coatings, and TiCN-based cermets have become of interest due to the relative abundance of raw materials. Thermal spray often results in the dissolution of the carbide/nitride phases from high temperatures resulting in brittle supersaturated phases. This work takes a novel approach by maximising dissolution through a high-temperature plasma spray and utilising heat treatment to reprecipitate nano-sized carbides and nitrides to form a … Continue Reading >
Student prizes 2021 First prize: Hayden Giles – “Plasma Sprayed WC-NiMoCrFeCo Coatings with Carbon Additions” Second prize: Abirrhami Rajagopal – “Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Crack Propagation through Normal and Degenerative Articular Cartilage”
Wednesday, 10th July 2019, AUT, City Campus, The purpose of the workshop was to provide an update on the current status of Metal Additive Manufacturing (MAM), with particular emphasis on improving quality, process repeatability, specifications and applicable standards. We will discuss what work needs to be done in NZ to accelerate the uptake of MAM by NZ manufacturers, thereby reducing future vulnerabilities to competitive and proprietary MAM operations. The benefits of MAM for producing, for example, parts of almost unlimited shape complexity are well known. The technology is often associated with the so-called fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) and threatens to disrupt many traditional engineering design and manufacturing conventions. Indeed, … Continue Reading >
The University of Auckland new Engineering building opened for Semester One 2020. It houses tailor made learning spaces to encourage collaboration and support learning. Here are some photographs of the building and the facilities used by our academic and student members.
Long-term Field-Performance of Waterborne Coatings PhD Student: Sina Sheikholeslami, Supervisors: Wei Gao, David Williams The long-term field performance of several environmental-friendly coating systems was evaluated via both conventional methods and a newly-developed test. We used the full waterborne non-hazardous Chrome-free materials which were developed by Fletcher Steel in NZ with Beckers Group in the UK to substitute Chrome-contained roofing products in Australasia. The new corrosion evaluation process was designed to be a rapid assessment technique, involving a modified Damage Tolerance Test (DTT) developed by NASA, the Scanning Vibrating Electrode Technique (SVET), and natural exposure at Muriwai Beach, Auckland. Our modified DTT was capable of ranking the coating systems … Continue Reading >
Titanium Dioxide-Based Nanocomposites as Highly Efficient Electrocatalysts for Methanol Oxidation Reaction PhD Student: Xiaoyu Yue, Supervisors: Wei Gao and Filicia Wicaksana With the fast-increasing energy demands and rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources, direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), as an alternate clean energy source, are becoming one of the most promising replacements for fossil fuels. DMFCs have several advantages including high specific energy, high energy conversion efficiency, easy to operate, easy to transport, and clean for portable applications. Platinum-based catalysts are the most widely preferred anode catalysts for methanol oxidation reaction in DMFCs. However, the sluggish anodic kinetics, high cost of noble metals and unstable carbon supporting materials have hindered … Continue Reading >
Student Awards 2020 First prize: Hugh Barlow, Thomas Chong – 3D printing Articular Cartilage for Tissue Engineering Second prize: Liuyi Huang, Kelly Zhang – Synthesis and characterisation of rare earth doped titanium dioxide nanoparticles
Student awards 2019 1st Place: Amanda Naude: “Protein Rejecting Surfaces – An investigation into the surface functionalization of polystyrene films for antifouling purposes”. 2nd Place: Stephanie Laycock: “Topographies of Thermally Sprayed Surfaces for the Purpose of Marine Adhesion”.
CITATION FOR THE PRESENTATION OF THE RICHARD HENRY COOPER MEMORIAL AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONS TO METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS ENGINEERING IN NEW ZEALAND TO PROFESSOR WEI GAO 20TH SEPTEMBER 2013 Professor Wei Gao has had a very productive and distinguished career in the fields of metallurgy and materials engineering. He graduated BE (Metallic Materials) from Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, ME (Metallurgy and Materials Science) from the Beijing Central Research Institute (BCISRI) in 1981 and DPhil. Oxford University (Dept. of Materials) in 1988. He worked in the steel industry, Chengdu Steel Inc., Sichuan, for eight years following his BE and was a lecturer at Chengdu University of Science & Technology, for … Continue Reading >
University of Auckland 1st Place Ellie McBurney “Photocatalysis using semiconductor polymers for wastewater treatment” 2nd Place Suet Ying Cheng “Catalytic wet oxidation of glucose over Cu-based heterogeneous catalysts supported on CeO2/Dy2O3/Tb4O7”