I will talk on collaborative work between applied mathematicians and industry in Australia which takes place in an annual problem solving workshop. The projects investigated span many sectors of industry, and include such diverse topics as cooling of cheese spreads, scratch resistant coatings on spectacle lenses, strength of carbon fibre yacht masts, and cooking breakfast cereals.

I will talk briefly about the sorts of questions that industry asks. Then I will give a more detailed discussion on moisture movement in ore stockpiles, a problem coming from the Australian mining industry. Various different mathematical approaches have been taken to answer their questions. The mathematics involves saturated and unsaturated flow.