Post doctoral position in metallurgy in Rouen-France

Hola,

Estamos buscando un(a) doctor(a) para un proyecto de investigación sobre la síntesis y la caracterización de la propiedades mecánicas de aceros inoxidables de tamaño de grano nanometrico. El contrato es de un año y empieza el 1 de Febrero en el Grupo de física de los materiales en Rouen, Francia. Aquí tenéis la descripción completa de la oferta. Si estáis interesados, no dudar en contactarnos.

POST-DOCTORAL POSITION
Group of Material Physics, UMR 6634, INSA of Rouen
Start: February 2014, duration: 12 months
Title: Synthesis of AISI 316 stainless steel by Spark Plasma Sintering and investigation of the mechanical properties.

Stainless steels are widely used in nuclear industry for their good corrosion and irradiation resistance. For AISI 316L steels, recent investigations reported that a nanograin structure considerably increases the irradiation resistance due to the large grain boundary densities which act as sinks for the irradiation defects. Nanostructured 316L stainless steels are hence considered as a potential material for nuclear industries. Nevertheless, up to now, no data is available about the mechanical behavior of this kind of material due to low dimensions of the samples obtained by conventional sintering or severe plastic strain. Samples with larger dimensions are hence necessary to characterize the mechanical behavior by classical mechanical tests and then validate the use of this material for nuclear applications.

Spark Plasma sintering is a new process which seems to be suitable for the elaboration of nanostructured metals. By applying a large electrical current together with high temperature and pressure to a nanopowder, it is possible to obtain large dimension samples with an average grain size in the nanometer range. The objective of this post-doc is then to produce austenitic stainless steel with nanograins by spark plasma sintering and then to characterize the mechanical behavior by conventional mechanical tests.

The different tasks will be the following ones:

1. Reduction of the initial powder (provided by GoodFellow) by ball-milling steps.
2. Investigate the synthesis conditions to obtain full dense 316L SS with nanograins.
3. Analyze the microstructure of the samples: grain size, crystallographical texture, carbon contamination, phase transformation by SEM, TEM and SAT
4. Production by SPS of tensile test samples.
5. Mechanical characterization by tensile tests.

This post-doctoral position is linked to a 12 months project associated with two material science laboratories located in Normandy: CRISMAT (Caen) and the Material Physic Group (Rouen). The synthesis will be performed in Caen together with part of the microstructural characterization whereas the other part of the microstructural characterization and the mechanical properties investigation will be carried out in Rouen.

The applicant must have a PhD in Mechanics or in Materials Science (metallurgy) and should have an experience in steel metallurgy, microstructural analysis (TEM or SEM) and in mechanical properties.

NET income: around 2000 euros.
Contacts: C. Keller, Assistant Professor, GPM-Rouen (clement.keller@insa-rouen.fr)
E. Hug, Professor, Crismat-Caen (eric.hug@ensicaen.fr)