From 4th to 6th April 2022, HetSys CDT students, together with staff and students from across the Faculty, took part in an Industry Study Group on campus at Warwick.

Challenges were posed by Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA, TWI Ltd and Bayer AG, focussing on uncertainties in Molecular Dynamics Simulations, corrosion in "Slugcatchers" used in the oil and gas industry, and the absorption of Plant Protection Products (PPPs) in soils, respectively.

Students worked together intensively with input from the industry partners and staff to devise, model, code and compute solutions to the challenges, before presenting their results back to the group at the end of the event.

HetSys Director, Professor Julie Staunton said:

The event really demonstrated the true interdisciplinary nature of HetSys. It was fantastic to sense the enthusiasm and to see our students pooling their expertise to solve these problems in innovative and exciting ways.

Felix Hanke from Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA commented that:

It was great to see so many different solutions approached to our challenge, and to learn from students and staff alike. I really hope that we can use this opportunity as a start for a longer term collaboration with HetSys.

Tom Rocke, who is a first year PhD student within HetSys, worked on the challenge set by Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA and said:

The most valuable part of the Industry Study Event to me was being able to apply the techniques which we study in the HetSys training on a Real World problem. Applications of techniques used in lectures and workshops are often curated to give nice neat results as a demonstration tool, so it was stimulating to work on a problem where the path forward was less obvious.

Study Groups with industry have been running for over fifty years. They have been hugely successful in solving problems and providing insight for various organisations. Previous events have pump-primed current co-funded HetSys PhD projects with AWE and Astra Zeneca.

We would like to offer our thanks to the Knowledge Transfer Network and the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account for supporting this important event, and of course to our colleagues from Dassault Systèmes BIOVIA, TWI Ltd and Bayer AG for their time and input.

Christopher Woodgate, a current 3rd year HetSys student and his supervisor Julie Staunton have had their latest paper featured as an Editors' Suggestion in Physical Review B.

Short-range order in high-entropy alloys (HEA) prompts exciting physical questions: What are the implications for material properties, and what underlying mechanisms are drivers? In this theoretical work Christopher and Julie describe a rigorous, first-principles approach combined with atomistic modelling to assess the nature of compositional order in the prototypical HEA, NiCoFeMnCr, and its derivatives. In particular, this work shows that finding the range of interactions, and representing the resulting behavior in reciprocal space, is important for understanding the stability of these materials.

You can read the article online here.

You can read more about Christopher and Julie's work here.

HetSys is pleased to announce that it will be running a second Industry Study Group, in partnership with the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN).

Mathematical Science Study Groups with industry have been running for over fifty years and, having started with pioneering work in the UK in the 1960s, these groups now take place all over the world in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. They have been hugely successful in solving problems and providing insight for various organisations. Building on the successful sessions of 2017, 2019 and virutally in 2020. HetSys and KTN are delighted to host this event for a multidisciplinary research audience of HetSys PhD students and their supervisors, academics and associated colleagues between the 3rd April and 6th April, on campus at Scarman House.