Crystal plasticity modelling for Fusion Energy

Fusion has the potential to provide a new source of unlimited energy and is now entering a critical and exciting phase of engineering delivery. This project is a collaboration between the University of Oxford and UKAEA (UK Atomic Energy Authority), who hold the world record for fusion energy production. UKAEA are advancing a project called STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production), the first UK prototype power plant. The materials engineering challenges are significant due to the extreme conditions inside the reactor. You will be part of a team modelling materials for fusion. We are interested in how metals deform and break, based on the underlying physics. This requires writing computer code (Abaqus user subroutines for crystal plasticity and cohesive zone modeling), running computer simulations, and comparing predictions with experiments to validate the model. The models we are developing with UKAEA will feed into the design of the new STEP reactor with the aim of making fusion energy a reality.

This project is part of a wider effort to address the significant lack of relevant data on the materials response to yet unchartered extreme fusion environments. Getting this data is impossible until the first generation of fusion reactors are operational. This project is part of a collaboration between UKAEA and Oxford University to develop predictive models to provide engineering relevant material property predictions throughout service. This will provide a degree of confidence to structural integrity assessments in the design phases and critically provide a means of calibration/validation through service by the testing of surveillance samples.

You will join a modelling team in Oxford working in close collaboration with UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). The Abaqus user subroutines written in Fortran in Oxford (https://github.com/TarletonGroup/CrystalPlasticity), will be used and further developed in this project to simulate the influence of radiation damage on mechanical behaviour of fusion relevant alloys for the UK’s prototype fusion power plant (STEP). You will be working closely with a team at UKAEA to simulate their experiments.

Further Reading:
Eralp Demir, Alvaro Martinez-Pechero, Chris Hardie, Edmund Tarleton,
OXFORD-UMAT: An efficient and versatile crystal plasticity framework,
International Journal of Solids and Structures,
Volume 307, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsolstr.2024.113110