Materials Research Centre
in the Department of Mechanical Engineering

MRC News

• WEMMA Event
  
  Wednesday 21 March 2007 - 19.00,
  Dr Who? Presentations from our Area Universities: Bizzarly Interesting?
  Speakers to be announced.
  Venue: 3East 2.1, University of Bath
  
  Friday 2 March 2007 - 19.00
  39th Annual Dinner (pdf)
  Vanue: Claverton Rooms, University of Bath
  
  IMechE
  Monday 19 March 2007 - 19.00
  PhD showcase Lectures
  Venue: 3East 2.1
  
  WEMMA and WJS
  Tuesday 17 April 2007 - 19.30
  Samurai Swoards
  Dr E J MacDonald
  Venue: City of Bristol College, Bristol
  
  WEMMA
  Wednesday 16 May 2007 - 19.30
  WEMMA AGM and Lecture:
  Wood, Whacks and Wind - Performance Optimism with Wood
  Dr Martin Ansell, University of Bath
  Venue: BAWA, Filton, Bristol

Accreditation of Sports and Medical Engineering degrees - copy correspondence with the Institute of Mechanical Engineering confirming the accreditation of these two degrees.

Currently there are no vacancies within the Centre

Recent News:

A Placement Success Story

The 8 th European Conference on Applied Polar Dielectrics, Metz , France 2006
Rhodri W C Lewis, Sports, Medical and Materials Group,Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bath
The eighth European Conference on Applied Polar Dielectrics was held at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) in Metz , France from the 5 th – 8 th September 2006. The purpose of this conference was to bring together a worldwide congregation of established researchers and industrial representatives from the field of polar dielectric materials. Rhodri presented a poster on ‘Modelling 3-3 composites for enhanced hydrophone performance' based on work undertaken during a bursary funded by the EPSRC Piezo Device Modelling Network. His paper was accepted by the referees and will be published in Ferroelectrics.

Rhodri undertook this work as part of his placement year, working with Dr Chris Bowen. He awarded a grant to study piezoelectric and was sponsored to attend the conference by the Armourers' and Brasiers Company and the Institute of Mechanical Engineers . Rhodri is to be congratulated as it is most unusual for a placement student to present a paper at an international conference let alone have a paper published in a recognised journal.

Rolls Royce has awarded SMS Consultants in the Department of Mechanical Engineering a contract for £30,000 to investigate the potential of a new non-destructive evaluation (NDE) technique, thermosonics, for the inspection of gas turbine engine components. This award is the result of a very successful EPSRC funded research project involving Professor Darryl Almond's NDE group at Bath, Professor Peter Cawley's NDE group at Imperial College and industrial sponsorship from Rolls Royce, Airbus, BNFL and DSTL. The project showed the thermosonic technique to be a rapid means of detecting defects such as cracks in engineering components. Rolls Royce are keen to make use of thermosonics for the inspection of engine components such as turbine blades but they need to have exhaustive tests made to ensure that the new technique is able to reliably detect any defect present. SMS Consultants will be performing these tests on a large number of Rolls Royce components, making use of the thermosonic testing equipment and expertise developed during the research project. This very close collaboration between the University and industry is an early success of the UK Research Centre in NDE, set up by EPSRC to establish a centre of excellence for the field of NDE and to act as a research resource for industry. The NDE groups at Bath and Imperial are members of the Centre and Rolls Royce is founding industrial member.

37th Annual Dinner - Sports, Medical and Materials Group: Sports, Photographs from the Annual Dinner,Claverton Rooms, University of Bath, Friday 10th March 2006

Dr Kristan Bromley, a research officer within the Group finished fifth at the Winer Olympics in the Skeleton Bob. This girl friend, Shelley Rudman won the silver medal at the same Games on a sled engineered by Dr Bromley.

Dr Michele Meo, on 1st January 2006 fomerly at Cranfield University joined the Materials Research Centre as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Meo's primary research interests are in the field of finite element analysis, applied structural mechanics, and optimisation methods. Specific topics of interest include the development of methodologies to detect damage in aerospace and civil structures and application of finite element methods for linear and non-linear structural problems, applied both to aircraft and civil structures with special emphasis on crashworthiness of composite airframe structures.

Professor Darryl Almond, Head, Materials Research Centre has been awarded the following EPSRC research grant:

• Combined remote thermography adn non-tact ultrasoni inspection using pusled laser excitation, £44,736.

Dr Martin Ansell, Head, Sports, Medical and Materials Group and a member of the Materials Research Centre has sucessfully attracted the following research grants in the current academic year:

• Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Alderley Holdings Ltd, TCS 4216
  “Development of new insulation material for application to sub-sea
  production equipment”, £99,044, (2005-07), Associate, Dr Keyurkumar Somani.

• Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Rotafix (Northern Limited), KTP 1153,
  “Improved adhesive systems for bonding timber”, £107,812, (2005-08),
  awarded, associate under recruitment.

Dr Chris Bowen, in collaboration with Dr Irene Turner and Professor Julian Chaudhuri (Department of Chemical Engineering) have been jointly awarded a grant to the value of £253,352 by the EPSRC for three years, commencing on 1 October 2005. The grant entitled "Functional bioceramic composites for enhanced and controlled bone growth in biomedical and tissue engineering applications" involves collaboration between materials scientists and engineers whose research areas include functional materials, biomaterials, biochemical and tissue engineering. The research programme will explore the development of a new generation of functional bioceramic composites based on the principles of (i) accelerated or decelerated bone growth on the charged surface of polarised hydroxyapatite and (ii) the piezoelectric behaviour of bone. The concept of an induced surface charge which can enhance or suppress bone growth, depending on its polarity, can be developed by the design of biocomposites which integrate bioactive materials, such as hydroxyapatite, with ferroelectric materials which are spontaneously polarised and are piezoelectric in nature.

From February 2006 Dr IG Turner, Professor Tony Miles, Dr Sabina Gheduzzi , Dr BP Casey. KTP project with Corin Ltd on Biomedical Coatings. £117,984.

UK Research Centre in Non-Destructive Evaluation

Thermographic NDE research in the Materials Research Centre led by Professor Darryl Almond is enjoying new funding by the EPSRC. A consortium of six UK research groups at: Imperial College, University of Bristol, University of Warwick, University of Nottingham, Strathclyde University and the University of Bath form the EPSRC funded UK Research Centre for NDE.

International Travel Grant

Jon Gittings, a PhD student from the Materials Research Centre, has received the Potteries Mechanics Institute's (PMI) PhD Bursary Award for 2005. He was presented with the cheque in October, and will use the money to travel to Bangkok where he will demonstrate laboratory work related to his PhD at the Thai Ministry of Technology in Bangkok, as well as guest lecturing at Thai universities. He will also travel to Nanyang University in Singapore later next year to continue his research while also undertaking some lecturing.

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