Thesis Title:Effect of Chromium Containing Dispersoids on Microstructure Evolution of Al-Mg-Si Alloys.Al-Mg-Si (6xxx series) based alloys are increasingly being used in the automotive industry. The primary reason is to reduce the weight of vehicles, resulting in a reduction of CO2 emissions and increased fuel efficiency. The demand for 6xxx series is predicted to increase over the coming decade. Due to the high cost and CO2 emissions produced by raw extraction of aluminium, close loop recycling of these alloys becomes a more important process. However recycling of automotive alloys can be difficult due to pick up of impurity elements such as Mn, Cr and Fe. The addition of these elements can form dispersoid particles during early heat treatment processes. Although a controlled population of dispersoids is necessary to control the grain structure during thermo-mechanical processing, a significant change to the dispersoid population due to a composition change could profoundly influence the final microstructure, affecting the final properties of the material. More research is required on the precipitation and effect of additional minor alloying elements; in order to increase the 6xxx series alloys recyclability.

Commissioned a ground based ozone analyser for the Centre of Atmospheric Science, University of Manchester. In addition, I developed a program to gather live ozone readings in Manchester that can be viewed daily on the Manchester Whitworth Observatory website; http://www.cas.manchester.ac.uk/restools/whitworth/plots/