Dr Wenbin Zhou

Lecturer

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, School of Science and Engineering

Wenbin Zhou

Contact

Email

[email protected]

Biography

Dr. Zhou is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Dundee. He obtained his PhD degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London. Prior to this, he held a BEng degree in Engineering Mechanics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and MSc degree in Solid Mechanics from Peking University. His PhD study was funded by the President’s PhD Scholarship of Imperial College London, and his PhD thesis was awarded the Unwin Postgraduate Prize by the Department of Mechanical Engineering for the best PhD thesis of the year.

 

Research

My research activities cover the broad area of renewable energy, mechanics of materials, materials processing, and sustainable manufacturing/fabrication, including light alloys, composites and energy materials. A main focus is the investigation of multiphysical phenomena in materials and structures under multi-field (thermal, mechanical, electrochemical, etc) coupling conditions, aiming to address grand challenges in sustainability, environment and health.

  1. Sustainable Manufacturing
    I have proposed and led the development of a novel flexible extrusion technique, differential velocity sideways extrusion (DVSE), for manufacturing lightweight streamlined extrusion profiles with superior mechanical properties and applications in sustainable transportation, which minimises the manufacturing defects, cost, and energy consumption compared with the traditional manufacturing methods requiring multiple steps of extrusion and subsequent bending. This technology is also known as Flextrude®, which has been patented worldwide and will be commercialised by a spin-out company, CurvEx Technology Ltd.
  2. Lightweight porous functionally graded materials and structures
    To solve the problems of heat short and low strength at high temperature for traditional fasteners used in aerospace thermal protection systems, I designed and fabricated porous ceramic-metal (ZrO2/(ZrO2+Ni)) functionally graded materials (FGMs) and composite joints with low thermal conductivity and high strength, whose microstructure, thermal-mechanical performance and failure behaviour were systematically analysed.
  3. Li-ion battery electrode materials and electric vehicles
    Diffusion-induced stress in electrode materials of Li-ion batteries during internal static cycling (charging/discharging) and external dynamic loading (e.g. vibration load cases in electric vehicles) is a major factor causing the deformation, fracture and capacity fade of the electrodes. I developed electrochemical-mechanical coupled analytical models to study the diffusion-induced stress field considering concentration-dependent modulus and external unified mechanical loading conditions (tension, compression, and bending).

Research interests

  •  Sustainable/Intelligent manufacturing for lightweight materials and structures
  • Materials reuse and recycling
  • Composites and structures
  • Process - (micro)structure - function relationships
  • Lightweighting in electric vehicles & Life cycle analysis
  • Renewable Energy
  • Biomaterials, Biomechanics, 3D printing
  • Surface engineering
View full research profile and publications

Teaching

Mechanical Engineering Project II (3D Printing)
Thermodynamics I
Computer Aided Design
Manufacturing Project I
 

Stories