April 6, 2021
2021 J.A. Woollam Scholarship goes to Krishnanand Shukla
Krishnanand Shukla, a PhD student in the Materials and Engineering Research Institute at Sheffield Hallam University, is recipient of a 2021 J.A. Woollam Scholarship from the SVC Foundation.
Krishnanand writes “I feel privileged to have received this extended support from The Woollam Company Scholarship Fund. As a research scholar it is extremely important for us to network and meet people who could share their knowledge with us. This provides the opportunity to do that.”
“Arthritis is a well-known disease-related to joints and may eventually require surgery (either resurfacing or total replacements). Such surgeries are painful and expensive as the prosthetics which are used for replacements are expensive. After 5-10 years, repeat surgery may be required (mainly resurfacing), due to wear and corrosion. Also, the alloys used, (prosthetics are mainly made up of CoCrMo alloy, Ti alloy or AISI 304L/316L), have a low load-bearing capacity and to improve this and increase longevity, plasma surface treatment is required. In my PhD work, we are using a nanostructure CrN/NbN + Compound layer (after plasma nitriding) to improve the said properties. Initial results show that the compound layer formed on CoCrMo alloy after nitriding, (using HIPIMS discharge), can increase the load-bearing capacity, hardness, toughness and fracture toughness significantly without disturbing the corrosion properties of the base CoCrMo alloy.”
