Materials for Nuclear Plants (PDF)

Wolfgang Hoffelner is currently leader of the High Temperature Materials group at the Swiss Paul Scherrer Institute performing research on structural materials for nuclear plants.  He is also Managing Director of RWH consult Llc., a Swiss based consulting company for materials and energy related questions. He represents Switzerland in different Generation IV Committees and he acts as task advisor and materials data analyst for ASME Llc.

Wolfgang Hoffelner has been Senior Lecturer for High Temperature Materials at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology since 1986 and he is currently responsible for the materials education within the Swiss Master of Nuclear Engineering Program. He received his PhD in Physics and his MS in mathematics from the University of Vienna. He started his work as a research fellow at the same place with research work on microstructural stability of advanced nickelbase alloys. He improved his skills in structural materials and mechanics during his time at ABB (formerly BBC) where he was working in different positions. He started in 1977 as a scientist  in the Research Laboratory where he studied crack growth of high temperature materials under fatigue, creep and high temperature corrosion. Later he became  Group Leader (creep and fatigue) in the Metallurigal Laboratory and Head of Section Mechanics and Materials for Gas Turbines and Combined Cycle Plants. 1990 he joined the Swiss Company MGC-Plasma Inc. as a Board member where he was responsible for technology of metallurgical and environmental applications (including low level nuclear waste) of thermal plasma. Wolfgang Hoffelner is member of ASME, ASM and TMS and he has published more than 130 papers in scientific and technical books and journals.

Dr. Hoffelner has recently been awarded the 2012 Staudinger-Durrer medal of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich for important services to the Department of Materials and excellent teaching of materials science.