ProfessorDavid Dye

My research focuses on the fatigue, micromechanics, design and in-service support of jet engine, aircraft and nuclear reactor materials, particularly superalloys, titanium, TWIP steels and galling.

A lot of the work involes advanced S/TEM and atom probe microscopy, complementing work at neutron and synchrotron major facilities like ISIS, Diamond, ESRF and SNS. We have also worked on residual stresses, on in situ microbeam Laue synchrotron diffraction on micropillars, on shock loading using the short-pulse X-ray laser at the Stanford XFEL, as well as more routine techniques like EBSD. We also have substantial capability to make and process novel alloys in our lab at the 0.5kg scale, and use national user facilities to scale to the 10kg scale and up to full (multi-tonne) scale.

The Impact of this resarch is the prospect of delivering safer, lower emissions air transport and energy systems. This also supports high value manufacturing in the UK, with the UK's large jet engine exporter alone supporting over 100,000 UK jobs in the supply chain and exports of around £16bn/yr.

Short Bio

David Dye is a Professor of Metallurgy in the Department of Materials at Imperial College, London, UK. He mostly works on the fatigue mechanisms, micromechanics and design of titanium and nickel/cobalt superalloys, with additional interests in twinning induced plasticity steels, zirconium and in superelastic NiTi-based alloys. Primarily, he collaborates with Rolls-Royce and across the aerospace and nuclear sectors. Prior to moving to Imperial he worked at the neutron spectroscopy facility at hte nuclear research lab in Chalk River, Canada. His undergraduate degree and PhD were from Cambridge University, on the weldability of nickel-base superalloys. He has received a number of awards for his work, including the Acta Materialia Silver Medal and has published over 150 journal articles. He was an EPSRC Leadership Fellow and a Royal Society Industry Fellow.