Adeel Shaikh

Ph.D. student
Project Title: Improving the Understanding of how Irradiation Creep Effects Stress Relaxation in Reactor Core Components
Adeel Shaikh completed a BSc (Hons) in Materials Science & Engineering and an MSc in Nuclear Science & Technology from the University of Manchester in 2012 and 2013 respectively. Following this he took up a role at Jacobs and is currently a senior consultant specialising in the structural integrity of the fuelled region. He continues to work and study for his PhD part-time at the University of Manchester. This project is complementary to Adeel’s work at Jacobs and this project is a fantastic opportunity to bring together industry and academia even closer.
Although the understanding of Zircaloy behaviour has greatly advanced over decades, irradiation enhanced creep has not when compared to say, corrosion. Adeel’s PhD will focus on irradiation enhanced creep of Zircaloy-2 and Zircaloy-4 utilising specialist in-situ creep equipment at the University of Manchester and the Dalton Cumbrian Facility, which will allow proton/ion irradiation. The results will be analysed via high resolution Digital Image Correlation, XRD line-profile analysis and EBSD. Adeel also plans to build on previous work done at Jacobs, utilising the MIAMI-2 facility at The University of Huddersfield, to try and observe the creep mechanism during in-situ ion irradiation and straining.