Imaging for Multi-scale Multi-modal and Multi-disciplinary Analysis for EnGineering and Environmental Sustainability (IM3AGES)

We face many engineering and physical science challenges if we are to develop sustainable and responsible ways to use our critical resources, mitigate the impacts of climate change, and meet our NetZero 2050 targets. Whether it is in raw materials, food, water, energy or infrastructure, sustainable solutions require better understanding, control and exploitation of how materials, processes and structures interact with their environments; and of how those interactions change the material properties and performance.

For the EPSRC community, understanding the properties and behaviour of materials in the natural environment requires observation and quantification of mechanical, thermal, chemical and biological processes. This is made harder because sample history matters, and experiments must simulate evolution over many length scales (µm-m; from individual microbe interactions or crystal growth to sub-surface flow of CO2 or H2) and time scales (s to kyr; from growth of a single fracture to storage of radioactive waste).

The best understanding comes when we work in 4D (3D +time) and integrate microstructural and compositional data from the materials, with that from the fluids, gases and biological matter they are interacting with: and repeating those measurement over the course of the experiment. X-ray computed tomography (XCT) is a powerful tool for these kinds of experiments, but it remains under exploited by those working at the materials-engineering-environment interface because of a nationwide gap in technical capability.

The main objective of the Imaging for Multi-scale Multi-modal and Multi-disciplinary Analysis for EnGineering and Environmental Sustainability" Facility (IM3AGES) is to fill that gap.

Developed (with input from >120 academics) to address the triple challenge of time scale, spatial scale and co-located multi-modal data acquisition during the consultation process. IM3AGES will provide the first