Dr William Pulfrey

William Pulfrey is an Engineering Lead for Royce at the University of Sheffield, specialising in the thermomechanical processing, testing and scale-up of advanced metallic materials.
His work helps researchers and industrial partners understand how new and existing materials will behave during manufacture, determine whether they can be processed using available equipment, and develop practical processing windows capable of delivering targeted microstructures and mechanical properties.
William’s expertise covers hot and cold rolling, forging, continuous rotary extrusion, heat treatment, thermomechanical simulation, tensile testing, hot isostatic pressing, canning and specialist fabrication. He is responsible for a broad range of research infrastructure, including rolling and forging equipment, the thermomechanical testing simulator, tensile-testing systems, Conform extrusion capability and two hot isostatic presses.
A key focus of his work is bridging the gap between small-specimen material characterisation and representative pilot-scale processing. The thermomechanical testing simulator enables material behaviour to be studied using small samples under tightly controlled combinations of temperature, deformation, strain rate and cooling conditions. This provides an efficient way to screen potential processing routes and establish an initial understanding of hot workability and deformation response.
William then translates this understanding to larger-scale trials using the hot-rolling capability. Rolling larger volumes of material introduces conditions that are difficult to reproduce fully using small test specimens, including realistic heat loss, friction, deformation gradients, inter-pass delays and equipment limitations. This makes the rolling mill an important intermediate step between laboratory testing and full industrial production.
The combined capability can be used to determine whether a material is suitable for processing on existing industrial equipment, considering factors such as rolling loads, temperature loss, cracking susceptibility, deformation behaviour and the width of the available processing window. It can also be used to optimise variables such as processing temperature, reduction per pass, strain rate, reheating strategy and inter-pass time to produce a desired grain structure, strength, ductility or other material-performance requirement.
This approach gives collaborators an evidence-based route to de-risk scale-up, refine manufacturing schedules and reduce the cost and uncertainty associated with full-scale industrial trials.
William has also led the modernisation of the hot-rolling facility to improve the quality, reliability and traceability of experimental process data. The upgraded system integrates infrared sensors for measuring material surface temperature, hydraulic pressure and force-related measurements, programmable logic controllers, industrial electronics and bespoke data-acquisition hardware.
He develops the associated control, communications and data-logging systems, including software written in Python and C++. These systems support equipment communication, automated data capture, live process monitoring, signal processing and the creation of structured datasets for analysis. The resulting information allows the thermal and mechanical history of each rolling pass to be examined in detail and related to subsequent microstructural and mechanical-property measurements.
William works closely with Sheffield’s alloy-manufacturing specialists, whose capabilities include vacuum induction melting and atomisation. This provides collaborators with access to connected research routes spanning alloy manufacture, downstream thermomechanical processing, consolidation, testing and material evaluation.
His hot isostatic pressing activities include responsibility for two HIP systems, together with the development of canning, sealing and fabrication approaches required for powder consolidation and other specialist processing applications. He also supports the design of tooling, sample geometries and experimental arrangements across the wider thermomechanical-processing facility.
William works with a range of metallic materials, including steels, nickel-based superalloys, titanium alloys and other advanced structural and high-performance alloys. His technical interests include hot workability, microstructure control, deformation behaviour, process scale-up, equipment capability, manufacturing repeatability and the relationship between processing history and final material performance.
He is also involved in developing novel and proprietary thermomechanical-processing methods for materials that are challenging to manufacture through conventional routes. Elements of this work are currently undergoing intellectual-property protection, and specific technical details are therefore not publicly disclosed.
Alongside his experimental work, William is developing digital systems for materials traceability, process-data capture and research-facility management. This includes a digital materials passport designed to connect project requirements, material batches, equipment records, processing parameters, sensor data, quality controls and research outputs. The aim is to improve reproducibility, data integrity, project delivery and the long-term value of experimental data.
William supports collaborations ranging from early-stage feasibility studies and material screening through to complex multi-stage processing programmes and industrial scale-up. He works with partners across aerospace, nuclear fusion and fission, defence, energy, steelmaking, transport, advanced manufacturing and specialty metals. He also contributes to grant development, equipment strategy and the future development of national thermomechanical-processing research capability.

William can support collaborators seeking to:

• assess whether a new alloy can be processed using existing manufacturing equipment
• characterise hot workability and deformation behaviour
• identify safe and practical thermomechanical-processing windows
• develop and validate rolling, forging or extrusion schedules
• translate small-specimen simulation into representative pilot-scale trials
• investigate the effects of processing on microstructure and mechanical properties
• consolidate powders or specialist materials using hot isostatic pressing
• develop canning, tooling and fabrication solutions
• introduce improved instrumentation and data capture to processing equipment
• generate traceable datasets linking processing history to material performance.