Career Details

Dr Wei Wen’s experience on research mainly focuses on multi-scale modelling of Crystal Plasticity (CP). In 2013, he completed his PhD at the University of Strasbourg, France, in the group of Prof Said Ahzi. His work includes the development of a crystallographic self-consistent modelling framework and the evaluation of its performance for various materials under different loading conditions.

Since 2013, Dr Wei Wen worked at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, where he concentrated on the development and extension of a microstructure-based CP model for predicting the mechanical response under complex strain path changes and cyclic loadings; this was applied to high-strength steel and magnesium alloys. These works were funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Portugal) and involved collaborating with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the US. He also engaged with industrial partners for metal forming process design and Structuctual Integrity Analysis (SIA).

In 2015, Dr Wei Wen joined LANL as a Post Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) under the supervision of Dr Carlos Tomé and Dr Laurent Capolungo. His research at LANL focused on physics-based constitutive modelling to predict the irradiation and thermal creep behaviour of fuel cladding materials (Zr and high-Cr steel alloys) in nuclear power plants under normal and accidental circumstances. He was responsible for analysing the micromechanisms (e.g. solute strengthening and dislocation-defect interactions) and linking the outcomes of lower length scale simulations and microstructure characterization with the bulk performance. During this period, he proposed multiple physics-based constitutive models within CP framework for thermal and irradiation creep. He also implemented the developed models into finite element (FE) platforms and performed simulations on cladding tube structures under complex loading environments. His work at LANL was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Nuclear Energy through Nuclear Energy Advanced Modelling and Simulation (NEAMS) and Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) programmes. Dr Wei Wen’s research was highly recognized by U.S. DOE and he received in 2018 a Spot Award for his outstanding performance and exceptional quality of work.

Currently, Dr Wei Wen is a lecturer in the Department of Engineering at Lancaster University (LU). His research at Lancaster includes (1) full-field Crystal Plasticity Finite Element Method (CP-FEM) modelling to describe microstructure-property relationships of wrought and additively manufactured materials, (2) data-driven constitutive modelling, (3) materials design and process optimisation for additive manufacturing and (4) high entropy alloys.