David has worked in the materials and residual stress team in the Advanced Forming Research Centre, one of the specialist technology centres of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, for the past five years.  He is an expert in his field and currently leads the residual stress measurement theme within the centre. His research interests include measurement and analysis of residual stress, the impact of residual stress within a manufacturing environment and novel methods for the management and mitigation of residual stress and associated issues.

Prior to joining the AFRC, David completed a PhD with the University of Strathclyde and Culham Centre for Fusion Energy on the topic of metallurgical and residual stress characterisation of dissimilar material joints for nuclear applications.

Stuart is member of the materials and residual stress team in the Advanced Forming Research Centre, one of the specialist technology centres of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland.

Prior to joining the AFRC in 2014, Stuart spent 22 years in the metallurgical manufacturing industry within the global automotive supply chain. During this time he spent over 10 years on the shop floor, working on industrial R&D projects in the continuous casting of aluminium and bronze alloys, continuous sintering, and the cold roll bonding of multilayer aluminium alloys to steel.

For 8 years he managed an industrial performance and failure analysis department, investigating the properties, application and performance of plain bearings for internal combustion engines. This became a highly customer facing technical role, working directly with engineers and scientists from the world's leading automotive manufacturers. For the final 5 years of his time in industry, Stuart held the position of quality and process engineering manager, overseeing four teams of scientists, engineers and technologists, supporting all technical and quality aspects of the manufacturing operation. Within this role he was responsible for all aspects of the process engineering, including the continuous improvement activities across the manufacturing facility, with a particular focus on the metallurgical manufacturing processes.

Salah leads the Materials and Residual Stress team in the National Manufacturing Institute’s specialist technology centre, the Advanced Forming Research Centre.  He is a world-wide expert in measurements, modelling and control of residual stress and also in the mechanical and microstructural characterisations of materials.  A key theme of his research is to utilise advanced materials characterisation techniques combined with in-situ mechanical loading experiments to better understand how microstructure affects the mechanical response of materials. The results from these experiments are used to validate finite element simulations.

Salah’s previous research focused on meso-scale fracture and the behaviour of materials under service loads in critical environments, using advanced photography techniques and electron microscopy to determine how microstructural features interact with cracks.

More recently, he has focused on developing novel techniques for measurements of manufacturing induced residual stresses to control dimensional tolerance and part’s non-conformance during manufacturing, while retaining desired microstructure. 

Salah is also a Fellow of The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) and he is registered as a Chartered Engineer (CEng).