Course syllabus

Challenges in Materials Technology (IMS 130)

(Material: möjligheter och utmaningar)

(LP1 2024)

Examiner:                  Uta Klement (772 1264; uta.klement@chalmers.se)

Teachers:                    Roland Kádár (772 1256; roland.kadar@chalmers.se)

                                    Lars Nyborg (772 1257; lars.nyborg@chalmers.se)

                                    Emmy Yu Cao (772 1252), yu.cao@chalmers.se

Teaching Assistant:  Ruiqi Chen, ruiqi@chalmers.se

Aim: Materials are an important part of the technical development of future products and processes that meet the needs and challenges of society. There are numerous opportunities and challenges at both the micro and macro level. The aim of the course is to provide an overview of materials science challenges with the aim of connecting several critical levels: (i) societal, (ii) industrial and (iii) fundamental scientific challenges and to increase the understanding of the connection and interdependence between trends in the societal challenges, e.g., sustainability, circularity and lack of critical elements, business strategic options for products and processes, and the trends in material development.

Learning outcome

• have a basic understanding of what are some of the frontiers in materials science and understanding thereof,
• investigate how could a constructive relationship between societal needs, industrial needs and fundamental scientific challenges be bridged,

-    describe the different challenges and their critical parts,

-    relate the new material concepts to the material's properties and microstructure,

-    comment on application limits and exemplify some of the trade-offs involved,

-    describe strategies/innovation potential of different industries/companies,

-    analyze technological innovations and markets and understand how this will affect our society.

Content

Lectures on sustainability and circularity of materials, gender aspects in materials science (societal aspects) and an introduction (teaser) to commercialization aspects will set the base for the course. In Lectures 5-7 we will focus on soft materials as a broad category of polymer-based materials. Why are they important? What are the current drivers from a scientific point of view? What basic knowledge is needed to understand the challenges in soft materials? The lectures on metallic materials will take up challenges from different application areas such as tooling industry, automotive/transport and medtech sector.

Organisation

The course will be divided into lectures, a workshop, and a lab session. Moreover, presentations will be given by company representatives to provide an industrial perspective. The course is both a self-standing course of 7.5 credits including a lab assignment of 2.5 credits for students taking this course as individual elective course. It also includes the 5p module (Module A) of the 15 credits course Materials Engineering (IMS115), which is compulsory for students following the Materials Engineering master’s program. 

Literature: Specific literature (handouts) will be mentioned/provided during the course.

Examination:

Quiz (20%), report on workshop (30%), and approved and graded lab report (50%). Notice, for Master students (following the 5-credit module) only the graded lab report applies.

Preliminary Schedule

Guest lectures are not yet confirmed, changes may apply. Please, also check TimeEdit for possible changes of location.