Dr Mingxing Zhang

Novel surface modification methods being developed by a UQ researcher will result in the replacement of steel parts with lighter metals in future fuel-efficient vehicles, aircraft and spacecraft.

Dr Mingxing Zhang, an Australian Research Council (ARC) Australian Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer with UQ’s Division of Materials within the School of Engineering, has been awarded a $65,000 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award.

Dr Zhang said lighter alloys, magnesium alloys in particular, had to date been problematic for wider applications in the automotive and aeronautical industries because of their softness and poor corrosion resistance.

"Lighter vehicles are cheaper to run as they consume far less fuel. For example, a 10 percent weight reduction in a car can save 0.7 litres of fuel every 100 kilometres," he said.

Dr Zhang said Australia had strategic long-term interests in the production, processing and application of light metals and had become a world leader in the development of alloy.

"It is vitally important we don’t lose any momentum in refining these products further," he said.

Dr Zhang’s laboratory is evolving and trialling different routes as well as two methods of treating the surface of light metals to vastly increase their strengths and corrosion resistance, but not their weights or densities.

Dr Zhang’s research group is one of a handful in the world racing to develop methods that will open the floodgates to replacing the parts currently made of steel in car, truck and even aircraft with lighter alloys.

• Dr Mingxing Zhang www.uq.edu.au/uqresearchers/researcher/zhangm.html

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