Exchanging Beyond Continents: First SALIENT Secondment Comes to an End
One major focus of the SALIENT project is a close collaboration with industry partners and the wider scientific community. In order to develop safer, lighter, circular and smarter, the consortium needs to base its research on the market reality as well as on the state of the art of scientific research.
To support this bilateral exchange, the project supports a number of work secondments, which allow researchers or professionals to conduct extensive work placements in other companies or universities.
For the first of this number of exchanges, Mr. Mohab Elmarakbi (Senior Researcher at the University of Northumbria) crossed continents and stayed for almost 2 weeks at the receiving National Institute for Material Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba, Japan this last January. There, he followed closely the work of renowned Professor Sherif El-Safty and Dr. Mohamed Shenashen and joined them in the preparation of materials, experimental procedures and methodologies, software configuration and data analysis:
Preparation of Materials: In order to prepare materials for experimentation and analysis, Mr. Elmarakbi received training on different novel equipment and techniques, which he then used to prepare and analyse different advanced materials and nanocomposites. Through their use, the team was able to investigate a wide range of advanced composites materials, their compositions, and dynamic behaviours under different loading conditions.
Experimental Procedures: Building on the preparatory phase, a set of experiments were conducted in the NIMS laboratory to prepare a silica-based nanocomposite.
Software configuration and data analysis: Finally, Mr. Elmarakbi configured a new software and ran it over a specific test sample. He was able to launch a set of experiments on the lab equipment and automatically gather data from the tests. These datasets were analysed to better understand the composition and make-up of the examined nanocomposite.
The exchange was a full success, supporting SALIENT objectives and advancing University of Northumbria staff member’s knowledge and understanding over the techniques of analysis for nanocomposites. On the other hand, the secondment also brought attention to the Japanese network and sparked interest within the NIMS institute for the project and its objectives.
Lessons learned during the secondment:
In depth analysis of various composites and identification of fabrication on testing processes required depending on the desired data and information that needs to be obtained.
Preparation of various materials and composites for a wide range of analysis, including mechanical, chemical, and thermal analysis.
Analyse and identification of various characteristics techniques of the nanocomposites.
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