Prof. Andrejs Atrens
BSc(Hons), The University of Adelaide 1970; PhD, The University of Adelaide, 1976; D.Eng,
The University of Queensland, 1997.
Atrens is Professor of Materials at The University of Queensland (UQ), where he has been since 1984. He was awarded DEng (a higher doctorate) in 1997 by UQ, and became Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2018.
An international academic reputation is evident from invitations for keynote papers at international conferences, invitations as guest scientist/visiting professor at leading international laboratories (in China, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, France & Sweden), a ISI H-index of 56 [web of science] (66 [Google scholar]), many citations (14,600 citations [web of science]; 20,800 [Google scholar]), and an excellent publication record in top international journals with more than 320 refereed journal publications. Research areas are: Hydrogen embrittlement of steels, corrosion of magnesium, stress corrosion cracking, corrosion mechanisms, atmospheric corrosion and patination of copper.
Atrens has made significant contributions to the understanding of the service performance of engineering materials. This includes:
- Related electrochemical hydrogen charging to equivalent hydrogen fugacity.
- Demonstrated that there is little risk in auto service of HE for the advanced high-strength steels currently used in automobile light-weighting,
- Elucidated corrosion mechanisms of magnesium alloys, stainless steels and copper alloys,
- Developed a model for the patination of copper, and a procedure for an artificial patination process,
- Developed an improved understanding of passivity in stainless steels and binary alloys such as Fe-Cr, Ni-Cr, Co-Cr, Fe-Ti, and Fe-Si.
- Characterised the corrosion reactions, types of corrosion and the corrosion morphologies for Mg alloys and related these to alloy chemistry, metallurgy and microstructure.
- Help to provide an understanding of the biocorrosion of Mg.
- Produced a comprehensive explanation of the strange electrochemical behaviour of the negative difference effect, which underlies the corrosion behaviour of magnesium and its alloys.
