MATERIALS RESEARCH AT THE UNIVERSITY-OF-BIRMINGHAM

The lecture on which this paper is based was presented at the Birmingham meeting on 8 December 1989 to mark the year of Sir Alan Cottrell's 70th birthday. The paper aims to relate the early foundations laid in part by Sir Alan to the recent award to The University of Birmingham of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) in Materials for High Performance Applications. The significance of one of Sir Alan's main interests, the application of dislocation concepts to important materials, is illustrated by examining some recent work on melt spun Al alloys and on Ti based metal matrix composites. This work has been carried out in the School of Metallurgy and Materials at Birmingham and is illustrated of much of the current microstructural work in the School.