Professor David Edmonds

Profile

David Edmonds graduated from the University of Birmingham with a First Class Honours Degree in Physical Metallurgy and the Science of Materials in 1965 and gained his PhD three years later for work on hydrides in zirconium and titanium alloys. From 1968 to 1979 he was a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, where he was a Fellow first at Clare Hall and then Corpus Christi College. From 1974 to 1979 he was a Warren Research Fellow of the Royal Society. At Cambridge he began electron microscope studies of microstructure, and structure/property relationships, mainly in steels, but also in tungsten heavy alloys. In 1979 he was appointed a Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, and joined the staff at the University of Oxford Department of Materials as Lecturer in Industrial Metallurgy with special responsibility for a new degree programme in Metallurgy, Economics and Management, and whilst there also became engaged in studies of depleted uranium and the development of thin strip casting for aluminium and other non-ferrous alloys. In 1993 he moved to the University of Leeds, as Professor of Metallurgy and Materials, where he spent two periods as Head of the Department of Materials, which became the Institute for Materials Research, and served on Senate and Council. His research in Leeds has mainly focused upon microstructural characterisation and phase transformations in steels, employing advanced electron microscopy and X-ray and neutron diffraction techniques. His teaching has been in the areas of ferrous and non-ferrous alloys; process metallurgy including melting and casting, mechanical working, machining and joining; deformation and fracture; materials selection; failure analysis; solid-state phase transformations.

He has authored or co-authored in excess of 250 publications and recently co-edited a two-volume 36 chapter book on ‘Phase Transformations in Steels’. He regularly reviews research articles for journals, is a member of international conference advisory panels, is an adviser for overseas universities and frequently acts as a reviewer for foreign government research funding agencies. He consults for companies in the UK and overseas. He has been a recipient of the Buehler (1980), Pfeil (1980), Vanadium (1993;2002) and Adolf Martens (2014) Awards. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, and the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Scientist, and was elected to a Supernumerary Fellowship of St Anne’s College, Oxford, in 1995, to Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2003 and the American Society for Materials in 2006. In 2009 he became Professor Emeritus and Visiting Research Professor at the University of Leeds. He is Director of Cadence Metallurgy Advisory Limited.

Research interests

Two primary research interests are the novel "Quenching and Partitioning" (Q&P) heat treatment of steels, gaining global interest for advanced high strength auromotive steel applications to improve saferty, fuel economy and reduced emissions, and developing a new route to economical free-machining steels via accelerated graphitisation.

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://eps.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>