UCT Centre for Materials Engineering

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UCT Centre for Materials Engineering

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The Centre for Materials Engineering at UCT is a postgraduate centre within the Mechanical Engineering Department.

The CME carries out research, education and training in the field of Materials Engineering. The Centre for Materials Engineering at UCT provides postgraduates with opportunities for research activities aimed at addressing national needs in terms of both the provision of technological solutions and the development of skilled graduates. Our competitive and comprehensive honours programme is open to graduates in the fields of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Geology and is the prefect foundation for a career and further research in Materials Engineering.

30/10/2026

The Rapid Product Development Association of South Africa (RAPDASA) annual conference in Polokwane this week was a fantastic opportunity to meet up with colleagues from around South Africa and discuss current research and plan potential collaborative opportunities. The theme of the conference in 2026 was “From Prototype to Production: Translating Research into Reality”, which provided an opportunity to think about how fundamental science needs to have a pipeline towards industry readiness to eventuate its impact. Congratulations to our CME presenters Mpho Ntloane, Michael Thomson, Maxwell Vos, and James Dicks. Thank you to the RAPDASA organisational team for creating an excellent conference and hosting us in the beautiful Limpopo region. We are already looking forwards to RAPDASA 2027!

26/10/2026

🔬✨ Research in action!
Our honours student explores the process-structure-property relationship of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) fabricated TA15 titanium alloy.

Through her project, she is investigating the correlation between laser power, scan speed, and hatch spacing, and the material’s microstructure and mechanical properties 🔥

05/10/2026

Stainless steel welded with precision 🔬🔥! Because every detail matters ✨

23/09/2026

Ewan takes us behind the scenes of his Honours project titled "The fabrication of Nano-scale Graphene Devices for Quantum Computing Application Using Electron Beam Lithography".

Graphene has very interesting conductive properties due to its sp2 hybridised structure. One of these interesting properties is how ballistic transport of electrons works in graphene. Ballistic transport occurs when the device size is smaller than the mean free path of the electrons, so it is often observed in nano-materials. However, graphene has an exceptionally large mean free path, meaning that the electrons could travel up to several micrometers before scattering.

Ewan will be assessing if graphene a suitable material to use in quantum computing to overcome the quantum decoherence issue.

21/09/2026

Graphene flakes preparation for transfer into a Hall bar device geometry ❄✨🔬.

16/09/2026

3D printed tensile and 3-point bending specimens produced using masked stereolithography additive manufacturing for parametric optimisation research.

04/09/2026

Diving into Honour's Projects ✨!

Marc shares his insight on tuning the flexural properties of basalt fibre reinforced composites. His goal is to develop a reliable way to comparatively test different composite layups and understand how they can be optimized for differential stiffness in diving fins 🐬

Basalt fibres are not only incredibly strong, but also offer exciting sustainability benefits. And their applications go far beyond diving. From bridges to boats, basalt composites are making waves across engineering 🌊

24/08/2026

We came for the speckles, but the laser had other plans ✨

Dialling in laser parameters to create the ideal speckle pattern for DIC (Digital Image Correlation) resulted in this colourful surface anodizing effect on the steel.

$A close up look of the fracture surface of an LPFB fabricated CoCrMo sample$

17/08/2026

A close up look of the fracture surface of an LPFB fabricated CoCrMo sample

22/07/2026

Digital Image Correlation (DIC) strongly relies on a speckle pattern that is regular and can easily be tracked. Laser ablating the paint off a sample enables the speckle pattern to be perfectly created and calibrated to the camera lens to facilitate data collection.

Address

University Of Cape Town
Cape Town

Website

http://www.mateng.uct.ac.za/

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