Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Bristol Engineering

LynchPin.

Summer 2011

Working towards a Low Carbon future

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.02

LynchPin Summer 2011

LynchPin is produced by the Faculty of Engineering, University of Bristol

LynchPin teamJohn McWilliams, Emma Weeks,Carrie Wattling, Sam Hodder

Design and productionCarrie Wattling

Print and reproductionPortishead Press LtdPrinted on Revive 100% recycled paper stock using vegetable based environmentally friendly inks

Cover: 3d rendering of windturbines on the ocean(iStock.com)

LynchPin is available online at www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/staff/publicity/lynchpin.html

.

manner of areas which require intellectual rigour and strong problem-solving skills, hence my elation about our Royal Academy Leadership fellows, as mentioned earlier. It is heart warming for all of us, both staff and students alike, seeing individuals flourish, at whatever level, whether it is a student joining us or a senior professor winning prestigious fellowships. Bristol has always been about developing the individual and it is gratifying to see this value that we hold dear to us continuing into the next academic year and into the future.

Professor Nick LievenDean of Engineering

03

we

lco

me

Given that summer is now upon us, pending the notoriously fickle British weather, I anticipated writing an article summarising the activities of the academic year, reflecting on the turbulence of governmental policy and, in more positive terms, on the achievements of our students and staff. However, being an engineer, I generally look forward rather than backwards, and this time of year I always have a frisson of excitement about what is coming next. Our prospective new undergraduates have already applied to us and have been offered places, and research grants, which will kick off in the autumn, have already been signed and sealed. Thus, the summer is all about preparation for the new year rather than resting on our laurels and reflecting on the achievements of the last.

As always, I was delighted to see that five of our students won Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Awards again this year. Although this is mentioned later in LynchPin, I genuinely wish Keith Coventry, Peter Fletcher, Chris Jacobs, Eleanor Ruben and Rory Shanks well, as these students epitomise what makes Engineering at Bristol special: it’s about generating the future leaders of their generation. All credit to them. We now expect great things!

Remarkably, the National Composites Centre is now built. In a very short space of time we have gone from a sketch on a notepad to a national facility which will soon be populated by some of the world’s leading

researchers and students. Even I could not have anticipated how this would galvanise both students and staff into producing a research facility which has attracted attention from around the UK and beyond. All we have to do now is deliver on our promises.

Individually, no doubt one of the most excited people in the Faculty is Professor Nigel Smart who, we heard last week, has been awarded a five-year European Research Council fellowship in Cryptography. For anyone who uses the internet for banking or requires the transfer of secure information, it’s a huge relief for all of us that Nigel will be immersed in this activity, for all of our benefits. I’m sure he will enjoy himself far more than any of us can possibly imagine.

Of course I cannot write an article without mentioning the introduction of fees into higher education. It is something that has been thrust upon us and will undoubtedly change our and our students’ outlook of what we are here to deliver and how we achieve this. From an engineering perspective, we have always, I hope, demonstrated complete commitment to our students, and this is an attribute we must build upon. For students, those embarking on a four year degree need to think very carefully about their future career options. Fortunately engineering provides a strong platform, not only to progress within the discipline, but to move across to any

04 Newsclips from around the FacultyAppointments, awards, conference news and visits

06 - 11 Student newsThe Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Award winners, links between sport and engineering and all the latest news from Engineers Without Borders

12 Low Carbon TechnologiesOur feature article highlights the Low Carbon South West Research Project Competition

14 - 17 Research newsA closer look at Advanced Composite bridges with Wendel Sebastian, Tom Richardson talks about Autonomous Air-to-Air Refuelling and Subhamoy Bhattacharya reflects on being in the right place at the wrong time during the earthquake in Japan

18 - 20 Teaching and Learning Exciting outreach events Futuretech and Skirting Science and the ‘Inspired Engineering’ exhibition at the Bristol Museum

21 From the Engineering archiveProfessor Joe McGeehan and his team receive The Prince of Wales award for innovation

23 Faculty peoplePeter Foster, the Faculty Manager,speaks personally about his life

24 Focus on the University Teaching awardsFaculty of Engineering staff take the top awards this year

04

18

DAVE

PRA

TT

06

14 16

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

n

ew

sc

lips

The latest news and events from

around the FacultyNew Head of SchoolDr Neill Campbell will become the next Head of School for MVSE from 1st August.The three new Heads of Department in Queen’s School will be: Dr Andrew Harrison (Department of Mechanical Engineering), Professor Ian Bond (Department of Aerospace Engineering) and Dr Adam Crewe (Department of Civil Engineering)

£1 million for computing on encrypted dataBristol University’s Cryptography Group has received nearly £1 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (EPSRC) with the aim of transforming security applications in the future. The grant will enable the research group, led by Nigel Smart, Professor of Cryptology in the Department of Computer Science, to continue their work on forms of technology that enable computing on encrypted data, such as fully homomorphic encryption and multi-party computation.

The project aims to take these theoretical approaches and examine more closely the barriers to true practicality. The research could have wide-ranging impact on areas as diverse as database access, electronic auctions and electronic voting.

Professor Smart said: “It is really important that the UK invests in research in this area, as the potential benefits if we can make this technology practical could be immense.”

The new grant is in addition to another grant from the US agency, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), for research on fully homomorphic encryption.

Conference on Self-Healing Materials The Third International Conference on Self-Healing Materials will run from the 27-29 June 2011 at the Assembly Rooms, Bath. The conference is being co-chaired by Ian Bond (Professor of Aerospace Materials, Department of Aerospace Engineering) and Russell Varley (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia)

The scope of the conference encompasses all classes of self-healing materials including polymers, ceramics, metals, and composites, while biomaterials and bioinspiration serve as model systems that guide research in

the emergent field of self-healing. A broad spectrum of industries are impacted and represented by the field including aerospace, automotive, transportation, microelectronics, architecture and manufacturing. For more details see: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/composites/events/3icshm/

New Technology and Innovation CentreThe National Composites Centre (NCC) at the University of Bristol has been named as a partner in the first of a UK-wide network of elite technology and innovation centres.Bristol’s NCC is one of seven highly capable and internationally recognised research centres around the country which will make up the new Technology and Innovation Centre (TIC) for high-value manufacturing.

This new centre will be one of a network of about six in which the Government will invest a total of more than £200 million over the next four years with the aim of enabling British businesses to commercialise the results of world-class research in the UK and access major new high-tech markets.For more details see: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2011/7547.html

Zwick Science AwardDaniel Raabe, a former PhD student in the Queen’s School of Engineering, has been awarded First Prize and the Paul Roell medal in the prestigious Zwick Science awards for his PhD work in the area of dental materials testing using ‘Robomunch’. ‘Robomunch’ is a chewing robot conceived and developed by Dr Kazem Alemzadeh, Senior Lecturer, Department of Mechanical Engineering which is specifically designed to test dental materials and foodstuffs. Daniel thanked Dr Andrew Harrison, Dr Kazem Alemzadeh, Professor Stuart Burgess (Faculty of Engineering), Dr Tony Ireland (Dental Hospital) together with the technical staff in the Faculty central workshop and the Department of Oral & Dental Sciences for their support.

JEC Europe Award Congratulations to Dirk Lukaszewicz, PhD student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering who has won the JEC/SAMPE Europe Environmental award in the European Student seminar in Paris in March.Dirk was selected together with 20 other students from Europe to present his work

Dr Neill Campbell

Dr Wendel Sebastian

Mr Dirk Lukaszewicz

04

in a research competition during the JEC Composites Show in Paris: the world’s biggest composites exhibition. The judges particularly highlighted the innovation and industrial importance of his work, recognising the world-leading research conducted within ACCIS in the area of advanced composite manufacturing. The award includes a publication in the JEC Journal.

Dirk’s research investigating fundamental aspects of automated composite manufacture from prepregs is funded by a personal scholarship from Airbus UK. Hesecured his place in the competition by winning the JEC UK Sustainability Award at the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE)/Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) Annual Student Seminar late last year where he presented his paper ‘Optimised automated layup of thermoset prepreg’.

Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship Dr Wendel Sebastian, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering has been awarded one of only five Royal Academy of Engineering/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships awarded nationally this year, to study how buildings and road bridges made of advanced composite materials (such as glass and carbon fibre reinforced polymers) behave under different types of loading. The Fellowship will run from 2011 to 2012.(An article by Wendel about advanced composite bridges is on page 14)

Etienne finished his PhD research in three years and passed his viva with flying colours, while being a full-time employee at Airbus.Moreover, he has been a tireless promotor of the use of methods from nonlinear dynamics within the industrial context at Airbus and beyond. His achievement was specially commended by the examiners, Professor Eusebius Doedel (Concordia University, Montreal) and Dr Martin Homer (Engineering Mathematics).

PhD success for ACCISThe degree congregation at the Wills Memorial Building earlier this year celebrated the completion of studies for six PhD students from Advanced Composites Centre for Innovation and Science (ACCIS). The successful students were Greg McCombe, Faxiang Qin, Xiangqian Li and Yusuf Mahadik, all of whom have continued their careers as researchers within ACCIS, and Matteo Bianchi, who is now employed at nearby Rolls-Royce Filton. Chia-Yen Huang graduated in absentia.

Congratulations to the all Faculty of Engineering postgraduates who have completed their PhD studies in the past year.

Green Impact Awards 2011The Faculty and Queen’s School Office Team, and the Merchant Venturers’ School Office, Graduate School Office and IT teamhave all achieved a Bronze Plus at the University’s Green Impact awards ceremony to celebrate the hard work teams have put into ‘greening’ their departments.

Hosted by Professor David Clarke, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and attended by staff and students from across the University,

05

Non Linear Analysis group l to r:Sanjiv Sharma, Etienne Coetzee postgraduates Nandor Terkovics, Stephen Gill, James Knowles and Chris Howcroft, Professor Eusebius Doedel,Dr Phanikrishna Thota (Airbus),Professor Bernd Krauskopf andDr Mark Lowenberg

Greg McCombe, Faxiang Qin, Xiangqian Li, Matteo Bianchi and Yusuf Mahadik from ACCIS

Dr Daniel Raabe (right) receives his award from Dr Jan Stefan Roell,CEO at Zwick Roell Group (left) and Professor Ibrahim El Dimeeryfrom the German University, Cairo

Professor Jonathan Lawry pays his dues with a spot of boot cleaning for Comic Relief

Emma Wood, Sarah Wilden and Constance Gallion with the Faculty Green Impact award

Newton International Fellowship Julián Londoño has recently joined the Faculty after being awarded a Newton International Fellowship by the UK’s national research academies – the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. The title of the research is ‘Enhanced structural control systems for damage reduction under earthquakes”

The Fellowship programme is a government-sponsored initiative to ensure that the UK engages with the world’s most promising academics and provides an opportunity for some of the most talented early career post-doctoral researchers working overseas to carry out world class research in UK institutions across all disciplines of humanities, engineering, natural and social sciences. Fellows will receive support in the region of £100,000 each for a two year period in the UK.

Nonlinear Analysis of Aircraft Ground Dynamics PhD AwardOn 3 May 2011 Etienne Coetzee of Airbus successfully defended his PhD thesis `Modelling and nonlinear analysis of aircraft ground manoeuvres’. His research has been part of a larger multidisciplinary research activity in collaboration with Airbus on nonlinear aircraft (ground) dynamics, which is lead by Professor Bernd Krauskopf (Engineering Mathematics) and Dr Mark Lowenberg (Aerospace Engineering). Started in 2007, this collaboration between Airbus and the Engineering Faculty has been growing ever since. So far, a three-year postdoctoral researcher has been funded by Airbus, and a total of six PhD students have been employed on related projects, mainly through EPSRC Industrial CASE Awards.

ZWIC

K RO

ELL

GRO

UP

teams were presented with glass awards made either from recycled windscreens or bottles. The three Platinum winners were Procurement, Hospitality and Dorothy Hodgkin Building.

The Green Impact awards are entering their fourth year at the University and information about getting involved can be found at:http://bristol.ac.uk/environment/green_impact/ or green-impact-awards@bristol.ac.uk

London MarathonCongratulations to two members of the Faculty who completed the London marathon in April. Sophie Causon Wood (Systems Centre) ran a time of four hours seven minutes raising £1,900 for Action for Children. Peter Cooper (Engineering Mathematics and EWB) finished in three hours 22 minutes and raised over £800 for MENCAP. Well done to them both!

Comic Relief 2011Staff in the Faculty raised over £3,000 for Comic Relief in March. Members of the domestic staff in Queen’s wore fancy dress and rattled buckets collecting more than £100 and Paul Jones Parry of the National Composites Centre raised £175 delivering the funniest half hour of stand-up comedy to a packed audience in 1.18. Special thanks must go to everyone who took part in the MVSE Comic Relief Auction, which was a tremendous success and raised a massive £2,766!

Comic Relief is a major charity based in the UK which strives to create a just world free from poverty. Their mission is to drive positive change through the power of entertainment.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

AwardsLeadership

s

tud

en

t n

ew

s

Peter Fletcher and Keith Coventry(Engineering Design)

Rory Shanks, Elly Ruben and Chris Jacobs (Civil Engineering)

06

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.06

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.07

An Insider’s Viewpoint by Rory Shanks

It was an honour to be shortlisted for the ELAA, and attending the interview event at Warwick University was a rewarding experience. As well as enjoying the services of the conference centre, I appreciated the opportunity to network with like-minded students and share aspirations.

Before the interview I was extremely nervous. My experience of interviews was limited and 40 minutes sounded like a dangerously long time to keep someone impressed. However when my time finally came the butterflies quickly subsided. The interviewers were friendly and polite; the informal atmosphere helped me to relax so that I was honest and open.

I was proud to receive an award after the interview day. I am keen to use the award package to learn a foreign language to improve my versatility on the international stage, and I am looking at courses in management and professional improvement. This year’s cohort of ELAA recipients will shortly be allocated mentors who will help us plan our professional development in line with our ambitions.

The support offered by the RAE and its sponsors is really encouraging – it is motivating to know that institutions like the RAE exist and are there to help us with our professional development.

Once again, Bristol

engineers have done

extraordinarily well

in the annual

Royal Academy

of Engineering

Leadership

Advanced Awards

The Royal Academy of Engineering

Five undergraduates from the Faculty of Engineering have won these prestigious leadership awards this year despite strong competition from across the country, putting the University of Bristol jointly second with the University of Oxford. The successful students are: Keith Coventry and Peter Fletcher (Engineering Design), and Chris Jacobs, Eleanor Ruben and Rory Shanks (Civil Engineering).

The Selection Event took place from 8-9 April, at Arden House, University of Warwick where a total of 70 candidates (from 188 applications)were interviewed by Fellows of the Academy assisted by Sainsbury Management Fellows and alumni of the Advanced Awards Scheme. The names of the successful 42 candidates were announced in May and now form the 16th cohort of award winners.

The objective of the Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Awards is to allow ambitious, inspiring engineering undergraduates, who want to become leadership role models, to undertake an accelerated personal development programme. The winners receive up to £5,000 over three years to implement their personal development plan, devised in collaboration with the Academy, which provides them with the opportunity to acquire the skills needed to fulfil their potential. Professor Nick Lieven, Dean of Engineering commented: ‘I know I am repeating myself, but I’m once

again delighted that our students have done so well in these tough awards against stiff national competition. It is a tribute to just how innovative, and what great leaders, our students are – we see it here every day in the work they do, but it’s gratifying to have this external recognition of what a special set of students we have’.

The students have ambitious plans for their awards. Keith Coventry said: ‘With the award money I hope to enhance my awareness of cultural differences in engineering within different countries. I also hope to gain experience of different disciplines within the electrical engineering field.’ Peter Fletcher was ‘delighted to have won’ and expects to attend one of the annual European Young Engineers conferences. He hopes to get the most out from his award with the help of his allocated mentor. Elly Ruben said: ‘With my ELA Award I plan to improve my Spanish by taking a language course in South America, as well as developing my engineering interests by attending conferences around the world. Additionally, I’d be very interested to learn how engineering companies in other countries operate by gaining work experience abroad, perhaps in the USA.’ Chris Jacobs has similar aims and hopes to use the award to subsidise an IAESTE placement next summer, possibly using any left over funds on a Spanish immersion course in Barcelona or San Jose.

Well done to them all.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.09

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.09

chance. It was a great opportunity toapply the engineering concepts andmethodologies we had acquired so far to something that was interesting to both of us and sounded like a great project. I think we both had visions of riding around into the evening doing “project work” whilst others were beavering away in the labs. Unfortunately this wasn’t quite the case! Our initial project aim was to investigate the stress behaviour in a bicycle steerer tube under front braking. This was inspired by the unfortunate case currently being investigated in the Department where a catastrophic steerer tube failure had led to some quite nasty injuries.

The first stage in the project was to use High Speed Video and Finite Element Analysis to obtain a clearer understanding of the deflections and shifts in momentum that occur through the braking zone. This allowed us to choose carefully the positions of our strain gauges and confirm that the assumptions and predictions we had made were true. Strain Gauge Transducers were then applied to six different positions on the front of the bike, including three on the steerer tube which was a challenge in itself due to the difficulties of feeding wires out of the totally enclosed location.To further our investigation we chose to install a Load Cell Transducer onto the left front fork. This enabled us to determine the axial loads acting

Members of the University Boat Club including engineers James Diaz-Sokoloff, Giles Gray, Felix Chapman, Hugh Cooper, Christopher Scrimshaw, Adam Moss and Club Captain Patrick Vickers (in blazer)

Views of a bicycle frame showing the position of chosen strain gauges

through the fork during normal riding. This combined with accelerometers on the front axle allowed us to investigate the relationship between the axial load and vertical acceleration measured at impact.

Countless afternoons over the last few months have been spent riding up and down outside Queen’s Building during the testing phase. A portable System 6000 enabled us to record the Strain Gauge Transducer results at 10,000 readings per second whilst we performed a number of different tests. Initially the front brakes were used to brake from a range of velocities before we investigated the effect of various impacts on stress, axial load and acceleration. We were always easy to spot given the trails of wire and because I was sporting a fluorescent pink rucksack!

The hard work and perseverance with some very frustrating strain gauges really paid off once the results were finally collated. It was found that the stress in the steerer tube rose in a non-linear fashion from the top to a peak at the base, explaining why the failure we had observed occurred near the base. The project also gave a useful insight into the axial loading during the braking zone which could act as inspiration for further projects.

Giles Gray3rd Year Mechanical Engineer

Dr John Morgan, Teaching Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, supervises a variety of student projects concerned with sport and engineering. One he is currently involved with is ‘An Investigation into the Effect of Front Braking on the Steerer Tube Bending Stress and Front Fork Axial Loading in a Bicycle’ with Giles Gray (who writes below) and Nick Wills.

When I was offered the chance to base my third year research report around the behaviour of a bicycle under braking, together with my projectpartner Nick, I naturally jumped at the

camp in January. Hugh Cooper (Mechanical Engineering) has joined Giles in the first eight while Chris Scrimshaw (Aerospace Engineering) has overcome a number of injuries to maintain his seat at seven in the second eight. Hugh and Chris are both second years, and have had great fun lately telling our resident fresher Felix Chapman (Mechanical Engineering) how easy the first year of the degree is compared to the second. The support that these more experienced students can give to younger members is invaluable and is very useful when it comes to unit choices as well as helping with strategies to get through the year.

The first major regatta of the season is the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) regatta, held at the National Watersports Centre in Nottingham. The atrocious conditions resulted in the cancellation of a lot of the races and led to a number of unexpected results. Bristol did fantastically well in unfamiliar conditions and came away with two silvers from the weekend.

Buoyed by our success we approached our Varsity race versus The University of the West of England (UWE) with a quiet confidence, but we were by no means complacent. We all knew how much more the race meant to UWE, and we were ready to take it to them. First were the two novices crews, this was expected to be close as always, but the two resounding UWE victories, one by a margin of only three feet, were very disappointing. At this point I was trying to remember the last time UWE won the blade and chatted to my well-drilled men’s second eight, asking them to put themselves on the line in what was going to be a very close race. A very determined crew, containing four engineers pushed off. I was right, it was a very close race, and one that unfortunately we were on the wrong side of again. The two senior eights were still to run, the men’s boat lost by six feet, while the women’s eight went on to a resounding victory. The day was a bitter

0806

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.08

Team members Chris Scrimshaw (third right), James Diaz-Sokoloff (fifth right), Adam Moss (second left), Felix Chapman (third left)

Setting off for the Varsity race. Adam Moss nearest to camera, with fellow engineers Felix Chapman (fourth from front), James Diaz-Sokoloff (fifth from front), Chris Scrimshaw (seventh from front)

disappointment, especially just before exams, but that is the sport of rowing. Losing makes you stronger, and the crews will take the experience and use it as inspiration to train harder.

The next step on the road for the rowing engineers is the Henley Royal Regatta. The new first eight will again contain four engineers. Between now and then, the juggling of exams and training continues, although many would argue that the rowing only adds to a person’s exam preparation. Losing four hours a day to training means that the remaining 12 hours of the day (allowing eight hours for sleep!) must be very well organised. It also involves doing two races in the middle of the exam period, again requiring one to be very organised. At the end of the day every rower knows the degree comes first, but the additional stress is all worth it. The opportunity to race at Henley is the pinnacle of the sport short of the Olympics, and the feeling of racing through the enclosures is certainly worth a bit of extra stress through the exams.

Patrick VickersUniversity of Bristol Boat Club Captain

Final year Mechanical Engineering

The University of Bristol Boat Club is not your average student society. To start with, it requires the senior members to train 12 times a week, including six early starts at seven in the morning. Secondly, all rowers voluntarily push themselves to the absolute limit in training, sometimes only stopping when they are sick or suffer a black out. Lastly, the majority of members come from two distinct degree areas. If a rower isn’t a medic, they are likely to be an engineer.

In each of the four years I have been on the committee, the main members who run the club have all been engineers with only one exception from Chemistry.

A lot of people might find it surprising that rowing and engineering, two such time consuming commitments, are so often done together. However, the mindset for both is such that our students thrive on the high pressure, high work load environment.

A standard week’s training begins on a Saturday, with a seven o’clock start on the river for some very important water training. This usually takes just over three hours. The same is done on Sunday - no lie-ins at the weekend if you are a rower. There will normally be a weights session on a Saturday as well, in order to build strength. Monday starts with boxing in the morning before lectures, followed by a two hour session on the rowing machine in the evening. Tuesday and Thursday are always an early gym session on a rowing machine or a bike ride, followed by weights in the evening. Wednesday is another boxing session in the morning, followed by a water session in the afternoon.

There were six engineers in the top two men’s eights that ran until Varsity in May this year. Adam Moss (Aerospace Engineering), James Diaz-Sokoloff and Giles Gray (Mechanical Engineering) are all in the third year of their degrees. Adam and James have been in the second eight this year while Giles raced his way into the first eight on training

Engineering and SportPatrick Vickers examines the qualities needed to reach the top in rowing whilst studying for a degree and Giles Gray investigates the stress behaviour in bicycles for his third year project

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.Engineers Without Borders

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.11

This was my first visit to Moscow and I was prepared for a huge, cold city, but Moscow surprised me by its wealth of visitors and the kindness of its people. Despite having a reputation as one of the most expensive cities in the world I found it less expensive than many parts of the UK.

On the first day of the conference there were six plenary talks, the fifth of which was mine. I gave the talk in Russian since for most of the participants - including myself - Russian was their native language. It went extremely well, the audience enjoyed the presentation and asked many questions about education in Britain and in particular about education at the University of Bristol.

The rest of the conference was divided into ten sections covering different topics, so participants had the chance to choose between a large number of presentations. Altogether around 200 papers were presented which made it impossible for me to attend them all, but the experience I gained and the people I met during my stay made my visit a very worthwhile one!

For more information see:http://www.dspa.ru/DSPA/dspaen/dspaen.php

When his tutor Dr Naim Dahnoun was unable to attend an important conference in Russia due to unforeseen circumstances, final year project student Denys Berkovskyy stepped in to make the trip and deliver the talk in his place. He describes the experience below:

Quite by chance I was given the opportunity to participate in the “Digital Signal Processing and its Applications” 13th International Conference, which was held in Moscow at the end of March. When I heard that my final year project supervisor, Dr Naim Dahnoun, who had been invited to give a plenary talk on DSP Evolution and Education, was unable to attend the conference it seemed a good solution for me to go to Moscow and present the talk in his place. Although my experience in DSP Education was limited, Naim and I spent some valuable time before I left preparing and practising the speech. After a four hour flight passing through three time zones, I arrived in Moscow. The weather was very cold but I was warmly welcomed by Sergei Vityazev, one of the organisers of the conference who introduced me to his colleagues and showed me around the conference building.

Bridget White, winner of the Sir William Siemens medal

Denys Berkovskyy (left) at the DSP conference in Moscow with Sergey Vityazev, Scientific Editor of Digital Signal Processing Journal and a lecturer at Ryazan State Radio Engineering University

ANN

PET

HERS

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.10

President Marcus Scaramanga’s crew are planning a slightly different tactic. Rather than building up throughout the year to our biggest and best endeavours, all heads are currently to paper, planning an intense flurry of events in the new term. Aspirations will remain high, and a membership of over 1000 students is firmly in the crosshair.

What’s more, as ideas come together and the amount of work stacks up, a new Branch Project Team is being forged in the society to gather keen minds from both staff and students. Anyone whose ears twitch at the idea of strategizing and designing a

cutting-edge project in the developing world should considering dropping a note to ed9185@bris.ac.uk to join the brigade. This could be our biggest and most daring adventure to date.

But things have not tailed off quietly. After exams, the traditional trip to the Centre of Alternative Technology is on the cards along with an unusual charcoal-briquette workshop and of course some sunny invites to outreach festivals.

A great deal of this year’s committee have been snatched up by some of engineering’s most pioneering companies for various industrial placements. So in future we can look forward to getting an insider’s perspective.

Of course, a huge amount of thanks go to Nick Lieven and team for their continued support throughout this year’s activities. For a sneak peak of the antics we’re planning in the future, to join up or to simply read a bit more about what makes us tick, check out http://ewb-bristol.org/

Have a fantastic summer from all of us at Engineers Without Borders.

Peter CooperPresident,

Engineers Without Borders Bristol

It has been another exciting year for the Bristol branch of Engineers Without Borders. As outgoing President, Peter Cooper gives us a taster of things to come in the new term.

As the lecture theatre overflows with people, EWB Bristol’s AGM yields a new band of borderless Engineers, eager-eyed to lead the society to even greater growth in 2012.

Things will be different in the new academic year. While the passion for progressive, world-changing engineering will stay, incoming

Th

Congratulations to Bridget White – a final year MEng student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering – who is the Bristol winner of a Sir William Siemens Medal this year.

The Sir William Siemens Medal Programme was established by Imperial College London in 1883 to commemorate the many achievements of the Siemens UK founder. A medal was awarded annually to their top electrical engineering student. Carrying on this tradition, and to encourage the study of science and technology among today’s young people, Siemens awards a Sir William Siemens medal to some of the country’s top science and technology students each year. By encouraging more students to take an interest in science and technology, they hope to ensure that more of the world’s leading-edge technology is developed in the UK.

Nominations for the award from Bristol are co-ordinated by Dr Mike Barton in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Previous nominees have been from that Department but this year Mike decided to open up nominations to include Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering students. All the nominees have combined an interest in Siemens with academic excellence.

The awards ceremony was held in the Hilton Hotel, Manchester in May.Representing Bristol at the ceremony, Dr Hua-Xin Peng who is a Reader in Aerospace Materials and Bridget’s personal tutor, said: "Bridget has shown a remarkable upward trajectory during her time here, coming top of the Bristol year-three aeronautical engineering cohort in June 2010. This earned her the Rolls-Royce Prize for Best Third Year Aeronautical Engineering Student 2010. She is also the recipient of a Boeing sponsorship for her final year of study, awarded in recognition of those students who have demonstrated a flair and passion for engineering”.

Medals and Outstanding performances from Faculty of Engineering undergraduates Bridget White and Denys Berkovskyy

Moscow

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.David said:“Winning this competition, against such strong opposition, has not only given me the best possible platform to further develop this research in my 4th year at Bristol, but has also granted the project unparalleled business support here in the South West.”

In addition to David, congratulations are also due to two other Bristol students, who narrowly missed being selected for the final, but whose projects were highly commended by the judging panel: Alex Ward, Department of Aerospace Engineering, for his project investigating wireless sensing devices powered by fuel cells, and William Goodwin, Department of Civil Engineering, for his project on ‘A Low Carbon Forward Operating Base,’ which could be used by both the armed forces and humanitarian agencies during overseas operations.

It is hoped that the competition will now be an annual event, helping to promote further industry-linked research and design projects. Such

projects are already a formal part of some of our degree programmes, such as Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Design, and are becoming increasingly popular amongst students, providing a tangible link to a practical application. They are also a highly effective means of companies developing long-term and often much larger-scale collaborations with the University. They provide the chance to forge partnerships with academics and often serve as an ideal recruitment opportunity, allowing the company to gain a thorough knowledge of a student’s skills and work ethic, which would not be possible through a one-off interview. They can of course also deliver some immediate outstanding results, as demonstrated through projects such as David’s.

Paul Harper

For more information about the work of LCSW, please visit their website at www.lowcarbonsouthwest.co.uk.

CAD representation of the turbine installed on ahigh-rise building and of the device itself

The experimental model in the wind tunnel

David at the award ceremony with his prize winning device

Dynamic Designs Update

Peter Head CBE FREng FRSA of Arup, has been confirmed as the keynote speaker for the Dynamic Designs China Team Visit from July 18th-22nd. Peter will give a lecture entitled ‘Entering the Ecological Age: the Engineer’s Role’ on Thursday 21st July at 5.30pm in the Pugsley Lecture Theatre. The event, chaired by Professor Nick Lieven, will also include a presentation from ‘Team of Legend’, the winning team from the Dynamic Designs earthquake engineering competition held in China earlier this year. As reported in Lynchpin (Spring 2011), Team of Legend came through stiff competition from the best universities across China to win their visit to Bristol: the Dynamic Designs competition involved designing an earthquake resistant hospital building, presenting a detailed plan for the building to a team of judges (including Drs Adam Crewe and Wendy Daniell from the Faculty’s Civil Engineering Department) and then testing the model to destruction on the shaking table.

The team of Xiong Chen, Zhang Guanghui, Xin Yu, Wang Dongxu, An Zheli and Zhang Yang together with their tutor Yang Cheng have an exciting programme of activities in the engineering laboratories in Bristol. They will spend their first day with Dr Adam Crewe who will conduct a masterclass on structural design. The next three days they will be working with Bristol’s own experts in green engineering: Dr Wendel Sebastian (Civil Engineering), Dr Paul Harper (Aeronautical Engineering), Professor Stuart Burgess and Dr Mike Tierney (Mechanical Engineering) and Professor Judy Rorison (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) exploring materials and power sources to make their structure more sustainable. The final day will be led by Professor Patrick Godfrey from the Systems Centre who will bring a systems thinking perspective to bear on their conceptual design.

The event will be followed in great detail by the team’s compatriots back in China: qq.com, the major Chinese website that covered the live final in Shanghai (and gained 1.5 million viewers for that event) are sending a reporter to follow the team throughout, and the team will keep video diaries and blog about their experiences.

Further details at: www.bristol.ac.uk/dynamic-designs, or email john.mcwilliams@bristol.ac.uk

To book your place at the lecture and drinks reception afterwards, please email: emma.wood@bristol.ac.uk.

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.13

fea

ture

evening on May 4th: Variable Speed Superchargers for Enhanced Vehicle Efficiency (Adam Warburton, University of Bath) and Performance of an Earth Tube System for Meeting Building Cooling Requirements (Tom Hopton, University of the West of England). The presentations were judged by Alan Bailey, Chairman of LCSW, and Ian Roderick, Director of the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems, who had a tough task in selecting an overall winner. Whilst extremely impressed by the high standard of all three finalists, they were ultimately won over by David’s blend of both experimental and analytical research in proving the potential of the contra-rotating turbine device for further development. In fact, Alan was so impressed by David’s work that he agreed to offer two days of business support, worth at least £1,500, to help take this project forward.

South West (LCSW), a partnership between businesses, academia and local authorities that aims to support the development of low carbon technologies; and spans sustainable energy, waste management, transport, construction and manufacturing. A core objective of LCSW is to encourage links between academia and industry, and the competition aims to address this need by showcasing innovative research linked to low carbon technologies and encouraging students to pursue related careers. It was open to any third or fourth year undergraduate student from the universities of Bristol, Bath and the West of England (UWE), and was generously sponsored by Vestas Wind Systems, who have recently setup their UK Spare Parts and Repair Head Office in Bristol.

David’s project was selected alongside two other outstanding entries to go through to the final presentation

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.12

At the presentation evening, l to r:Ian Roderick, Adam Warburton, David Green, Tom Hopton and Alan Bailey

David Green, a third year Mechanical Engineering student, was recently announced as the winner of the inaugural Low Carbon South West Research Project Competition, for his project on ‘Contra-Rotating Wind Turbines for an Urban Environment.’ Working under the supervision of Julian Booker, David’s project has involved analysing and testing the performance of a ducted, contra-rotating turbine device, which would be installed on building roofs for renewable energy generation.

The competition was launched under the umbrella of Low Carbon

Technologies CarbonLow

Faculty of Engineering

student wins the Low

Carbon Technology

Research Project

Competition

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Cl

Bridge specimen under test in BLADE

Simulation of lorry loads on specimen in loading rig

Joel’s finite element model of the bridge unloaded

lab specimen to assess both the inputs (such as contact pressure between actuator and deck) and outputs (e.g. strains in critical zones) to and from the tests. Alongside these academic pursuits, the project benefits from a steering group made up of bridge owners, bridge designers, materials suppliers and a bridge contractor. This work is sponsored by the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Highways Agency, among others.

That advanced composites show tremendous potential to create step changes in the structural efficiency, durability and green credentials of bridges is a message well worth communicating to our undergraduates. This may be illustrated via detailed examples of the materials in civil engineering applications, but that learning experience must be embedded within key concepts which remain with the students long after graduation. In the words of the eminent psychologist B F Skinner, ‘Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.’

Wendel Sebastian

ACCIS DTC: One foot in traditional research, one in the unknown

It has been 18 months since the inception of the Advanced Composites Centre for Innovation and Science (ACCIS) Doctoral Training Centre (DTC), which aims to deliver 50 PhD-trained individuals over eight years in the expansive field of composites engineering and research. The vision of this EPSRC-funded venture is to secure a substantial increase in the UK’s future supply of trained composites engineers, whilst simultaneously leading a composites technological revolution through research at the interface between engineering, physics, chemistry and biology.

The intrepid ten graduates who embarked upon this new structure of PhD in October 2009 have been working on a broad range of projects, many of which have built upon or have established new collaborations with industrial links. Whilst several of these projects are firmly rooted within the aerospace heritage of ACCIS, several breach this traditional domain, and enter the intricate realm of multidisciplinary research. One ‘traditional’ aerospace project is being carried out by James Lightfoot who is exploring the process-induced formation of a detrimental defect often found within several aerospace components: fibre waviness. The presence of waviness in a carbon fibre composite can reduce the compressive strength by up to 30% and is, therefore, a significant concern to many manufacturers. It is hoped that through a ‘back-to-basics’ study of the effects of differential thermal properties of tool and composite, cure cycles and resin viscoelasticity, the source of this defect can be better understood, and hopefully mitigated.

Desi Bacheva on the other hand, is foraying into the unknown, researching bio-inspired approaches to novel wing concepts, in a project supported by Airbus. Her focus is Euplectella Aspergillum, a deep-sea sponge that displays a unique skeletal lattice structure, exhibiting a high degree of structural efficiency. Desi is currently analysing the pin-jointed nodes of the skeleton’s unit cell and its infinite structure, with a view to how fuselage structures of the future might be designed. This will shortly be expanded into rigorous analysis of the rigid-joined lattice and the stiffening effect this has on the overall structure.

The research being carried out by the first cohort of ACCIS DTC students has aligned perfectly with the Centre’s initial ‘vision’ with one foot firmly in the world of engineering, and one in the unknown.

James Lightfoot

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.15

In Civil Engineering, two examples of commonly-used composite materials are timber (a natural composite of cellulose fibres in a lignin matrix) and reinforced concrete (a 3-phase composite comprising stone, cement paste and embedded steel).re

se

arc

h

in the USA, UK and elsewhere, but 30 years later advanced composite bridges are still not yet mainstream. This is in large part due to the absence of design guidelines which enable practitioners to detail such bridges, in turn due to the lack of relevant underpinning research.

One vital facet of such research centres on understanding the fatigue resilience of any road bridge made wholly or partly of advanced composites. This refers to the ability of the bridge to withstand repeated pounding from the tyres of heavy lorries over many years. To that end, a project is in progress in the BLADE labs at this Engineering faculty to gain insight into the fatigue mechanics of such bridges. An 8m long, 3.65m wide bridge specimen comprising a glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite deck adhesively bonded to pre-tensioned concrete (PTC) girders, has been built and is being fatigue-loaded within a purpose-built test rig. Pre-tensioned concrete adds weight, but it also stiffens the structure and keeps durability high by strongly inhibiting crack formation which would otherwise facilitate ingress of corrosive agents.

BDA

VE P

RATT

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.14

Advanced Composite

Servo-hydraulic actuators are being used to simulate tens of millions of load cycles from tyres of heavy lorries on the deck of the model bridge. Another large-scale bridge strongly featuring advanced composites was tested to failure under short-term loading at a European-funded lab. The researchers on that earlier project have endorsed this new work to investigate the long-term performance of such bridges, made possible by the BLADE hydraulic system. The fine work of our technical staff in assembling the rig and specimen (which were pre-fabricated in parts elsewhere) is gratefully acknowledged. The entry into and assembly of the test rig and specimen within the BLADE labs required careful planning, as will the expulsion from the lab of the specimen (or what remains of it) after the final failure testing!

Joel Ross, a PhD student, is developing models to predict the performance of the loaded bridge. He started with a comprehensive computer analysis and is gravitating towards simplified predictive equations. Joel is verifying his models with data from arrays of sensors on the

ridgesWhile road bridges made of these traditional materials have performed well, problems such as corrosion of the steel reinforcement in concrete deck slabs (due to de-icing salts spread on the bridges in winter) trigger deterioration of these bridges. Also, in constructing new bridges along or above live carriageways, the provision of light, modular components which are rapidly assembled, which improve site safety and which can be lifted into position using light craneage is desirable, so that disruption to traffic flow during construction is minimised.

Enter advanced composite materials, which commonly comprise glass or carbon fibres embedded in and stabilised (in a structural sense) by resins. These materials, which have good track records in the aerospace and automotive industries, possess stiffness-to-weight ratios, strength-to-weight ratios and durability characteristics that can exceed those of traditional materials. In 1982, one of the first new road bridges to incorporate advanced composites was built in China. Since then other examples have been built

The Cassell Concise Dictionary defines ‘composite’ as something ‘made up of distinct parts or elements’. Wendel Sebastian, Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering, explains the use of these materials in the construction of road bridges

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.up. I also went to the Oimachi trainstation but found it deserted and all the trains were cancelled.

I was expecting to meet Professor Masayuki Hyodo from Yamaguchi University at 8pm. I was unable to ring him as the entire mobile network was down so I went out for dinner in a nearby restaurant, where I found the staff and customers incredibly calm. On the street, people were composed, and the hotel receptionists, police and traffic wardens were working with a smile - my respect for the Japanese people increased to an even higher level than before. In the railway station at Oimachi all the trains and the subway were out of service while railway tracks, bridges and tunnels were being checked (this affected around nine million people), but, extraordinarily, there was no feeling of chaos.

Aftershocks continued throughout the evening and night: I returned to my hotel at 11pm and finally met Professor Hyodo – he had walked for seven hours to be there! After our late meeting I went to bed, sleeping fully clothed, with my wallet and passport in my pocket, so that I could rush out of the hotel should the need arise. On the following day, Professor Hyodo and I went for a field reconnaissance survey around the Tokyo

Dr Tom Richardson from the Department of Aerospace Engineering is leading the University of Bristol research on Autonomous Air-to-Air Refuelling, AAAR. Working in conjunction with Cobham Mission Equipment they are developing the Flight Control Systems and Sensor configurations required in order to solve the challenges surrounding the “hook-up problem space”.

This is a substantial three year project involving two RAs and two PhD students at Bristol, all focussing on the complementary technologies required in order to realise AAAR. Undergraduate projects are also being generated through the course of the project where students are given the opportunity to be involved in a large industrial research program.

In order to support the simulation and control work, robots be will used for hardware-in-the-loop testing of the sensors. This involves the installation of two industrial robots, one track mounted, linked to a synthetic environment, to imitate the positional relationship between a tanker and receiver utilising the hose, drogue and probe refuelling system. Cobham Mission Equipment has commissioned the centre, as part of the ASTRAEA Autonomy and Decision Making project. The South West RDA is providing significant support to this aspect of the programme.

Alongside the research into AAAR, an advanced composite manufacturing capability using the same robotic facility will be established. The provision of such a robotics facility has been identified as a key factor for the University to advance its research on automating composites processing. Mr Richard Bourne, Programme Manager Research and Technology at Cobham Mission Equipment, said: “The development of this capability at Bristol University is crucial for addressing a significant issue within the evolving UAV market. It has already established stronger ties between the Company and the University which we hope to develop further and it will also deliver a flexible capability for further broad utilisation by industry and academia.”

Dr Tom Richardson said: “This is an incredibly exciting project, which places the University of Bristol at the forefront of work into control system design for Unmanned Air Systems. It also provides a fantastic opportunity for students at all levels to work with the industry market leaders on leading edge technologies”.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.16 View of the drogue from inside the cockpit

The RMR launch l to r:Paul Weaver andTom Richardson (University of Bristol), Yvonne Ward and Nick Buckland (SWRDA), Dave Ireson and Steve Purdy (Cobham),Jon Du Bois (University of Bristol), Richard Bourne (Cobham)

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.17

I was on the 9th Floor of a 20-storey Tokyo hotel when the 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan earlier this year. This was one of the five most powerful earthquakes in the world since modern record keeping began in 1900, with an unusually long duration of around three minutes. At 2.46pm I started to feel the building shaking. At first I thought it might be a mild one, but soon the violent shaking started. Based on my watch and crude measurements, I realised that this was a low frequency vibration - my guess was 0.5 to 1 cycles per second, which indicated that the epicentre was not very close. I peeped through the window and the swaying movement of a crane nearby confirmed that this was big.I could hear the partition walls creaking, but the connections were so strong and well-designed that nothing happened. Even the photographs on the wall did not fall off. I felt quite safe throughout, and continuously thanked Japanese engineering! Had this happened in the developing world, there is a strong likelihood that the hotel would have collapsed, as plenty of earthquakes in the last decade have demonstrated.

The lift was switched off and public announcements in Japanese began. With the help of a Japanese student I met in the corridor, I grasped that the message was to stay in my room. After about 30 minutes, I was led out through a stairwell with solid concrete walls to the lobby. The lobby was the safest place to be as there were so many tall buildings in the vicinity, any of which could in theory have collapsed. Within an hour, the lifts were working, and things got back to normal: power, hot water, and internet all continued working during the strong shaking!

Still, the hotel manager advised us not to go to our hotel rooms as they were expecting more aftershocks. The images of the disastrous tsunami were being broadcast on television and I was desperate to contact my family to let them know I was safe. My flight to London was cancelled, my UK mobile phones were not working, I could not connect to Skype, and I could not go my hotel room. So I thought a good way to communicate would be via Facebook. I’m not a regular user, but I started providing commentary on the hour-by-hour development. One of my friends rang my wife and gave her the news that I was in the earthquake but OK.

While we were in the lobby, we experienced a number of powerful aftershocks and I started to panic a little after it emerged that there could be food and water shortages. I went to a nearby convenience store and bought enough food and water for a week. By this time, the stores were rationing supplies, butthe manager kindly allowed me to stock

Suby Bhattacharyaobserves an area of soil liquefaction in the Tokyo bay area

The 20-storey hotel where Suby was staying when the earthquake hit

bay area. I had heard that extensive soil liquefaction was observed in the reclaimed area of Tokyo bay area.

I also reflected, as a civil engineer, on the fact that my hotel building and many other buildings in Tokyo showed that it is possible to design even non-structural elements (e.g. partition walls) so that they don’t fall apart. I looked carefully at myroom and it was obvious that a lot of thought went into the design and construction. I regularly visit Japan for academic collaboration not only with universities but also with private companies. Japan has five big construction companies: Shimizu, Obayashi, Kajima, Taisei and Takenaka, all of which have large research divisions. This is one of the reasons why the country coped so well with this gigantic earthquake: buildings are built to the latest state-of-the-art understanding of earthquake engineering.

In my view, it would be an understatement to say that lots of lives were saved by Japanese engineering. The tsunami was a terrible tragedy, but the earthquake itself could also have caused far greater loss of life. The fact that buildings like the one I was in, and thousands of others, remained intact shows just how important good earthquake engineering is.

Engineers versus NatureDr Subhamoy Bhattacharya was in Tokyo when the earthquake struck in March this year

Airto AirResearch into

Refuelling

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

andFuturetech Dragonfly

Outreach events in the Faculty of Engineering

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

. 19

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.18

tea

ch

ing

& le

arn

ing

A demonstration of semaphore during the Wireless Communications lecture

Breaking the 100 miles per gallon barrier

Dr Tilo Burghardt explains his methods for visual computing in the wild

more fully during future events.

Over 240 students and teachers from 17 schools attended and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact enthusiasm for Futuretech has been such that the event was massively oversubscribed and some of the schools that missed out this time have already been in touch to book a place at the next event!

The day was filmed by a professional camera crew, in order to provide footage for online publicity. We look forward to sharing this with you as soon as it becomes available.

The Departments of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Computer Science played host once again this spring to the ‘Dragonfly’ one-day hands-on workshop for girls aged 13 and 14 (Year 9). The Dragonfly Day is part of the Headstart diversity programme, targeting groups under-represented in Higher Education courses and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

The event was attended by 80 students who took part in activities ranging from programming a robot to find a light source through a maze of obstacles, to designing and building their own model electric car.

The activities undertaken - programming in the Computer Science session and the construction and testing of an electrically driven system for Electrical and Electronic Engineering - are typical of the two disciplines.

The day was a great success and more than half of attendees who provided feedback felt more positive about engineering as a result and 86 per cent would happily recommend the day to younger students.

how easy it becomes to solve a maze by constructing the associated mathematical network.” The girls then tackled Euler’s famous problem of the seven bridges of Konigsberg; the associated network was constructed by groups of four girls holding seven ribbons in the same configuration as the bridges from 18th-century Konigsberg, while others marked the bridges that had been crossed already with hair clips. Steffi said: “It was great fun to show a current photograph of these bridges in what is now called Kaliningrad; the girls were very quick to apply their new skills and noticed that the absence of two of the seven bridges had made the problem solvable.” In the second half of the workshop, dynamics was introduced onto the network. Hatti and Katy took charge of this part and showed a glimpse of their own research into the role of the network architecture and the infectiousness of a disease. Katy said: “While anybody can guess that the more friends an infected person has, the more likely the disease will spread over the entire network, we could also explore the ideas of vaccinating specific people in the network. The choice of vaccinated people has an enormous effect on how the disease sees the network.” The girls

PhD student Steffi Hittmeyer helps the Skirting Science students tackle Euler’s famous problem of the seven bridges of Konigsberg

Skirting

Academic staff from the Departments of Engineering Mathematics, Computer Science and Electrical and Electronic Engineering came together to present a series of events aimed at students in Years 11 and 12 at the Futuretech conference in April. The aim of the event was to give students an exciting insight into how these disciplines will improve the way we do things, offering a broader understanding of the science behind the technology and how it can be applied to benefit society.

The programme consisted of interactive lectures, presentations and hands-on participation. The lectures covered the areas of electronic communications, energy-efficient vehicles, and image processing for wildlife conservation applications. Professor Andrew Nix, Professor of Wireless Communication Systems, talked about the ideas behind the wireless revolution. He gave demonstrations of analogue and digital communications and ended his presentation by making predictions of what can be expected by 2020.Breaking the 100 miles per gallon barrier was discussed by Dr David Drury, Lecturer in Electrical Engineering. David gave a glimpse of the technological barriers that must be overcome for these vehicles to become mainstream transport and enjoyed by all but without costing the earth to run. Dr Tilo Burghardt, RCUK Research Fellow in Computer Science, talked about visual computing in the wild. He discussed how the application of visual surveillance techniques directly to natural environments is one way of providing high tech computer support in low-tech environments.

Current undergraduates were on hand to help with the day and to talk with the school pupils and teachers about their studies and life at the University.This opportunity to liaise with teachers was a valuable side-effect of the day, and one the Faculty hopes to exploit

Scienceformed various networks from the ribbons and simulated the disease spreading via throwing dice. Individuals were decorated with buttons resembling a pig’s nose to identify them as having been ‘infected’ with swine flu. Hatti said: “Real networks tend to be much larger, but we could still illustrate the difference in speed of spreading and the probability that the disease is stopped, depending on the network architecture.” In all, it was a successful workshop and a very exciting day that was thoroughly enjoyed by both workshop organisers and participants. The full extent of its impact may only show much later, but comments like “I learned that not all science is boring” and “I just didn’t even know before now that girls can become engineers” demonstrate the value of Skirting Science and prove to the organisers that it was definitely worth it.

Now in its third year, Skirting Science, is a unique initiative that is the brainchild of the local branch of the internationally acclaimed Soroptimists International, which promotes women across the globe, the science department of the Hans PriceAcademy in Weston-super-Mare and North Somerset’s Independent and StateSchool Partnership, Aspire.

In May a team from the Department of Engineering Mathematics visited the Hans Price Academy in Weston-super-Mare, as part of the initiative ‘Skirting Science’.

This event, which was attended by 250 schoolgirls from the local area, is a day filled with workshop activities hosted by scientists and engineers to showcase the dynamic and exciting world in which they work. The girls can choose from 19 different workshops - everything from learning how perfume is made to environmental considerations in the operations by Wessex Water. Organiser Ruth Thomas explains: “Skirting Science aims to encourage young girls to see the potential of a career in science - there is so much more than just being in a laboratory. It’s about empowerment, about new ideas and also about having fun.”

The Department of Engineering Mathematics, which was also present at the event last year, ran the workshop “Maths Amazes” that explains how mathematics is used in the study of epidemics such as swine flu. Dr Hinke Osinga and PhD students Steffi Hittmeyer, Hatti Mills and Katy Robinson exposed the girls to the intricacies of dynamical behaviour on networks with a series of hands-on activities. The elementary concepts of network theory were introduced by solving the Hampton Court Maze via the construction of an abstract map using nodes and edges. Hinke noted: “Several girls had actually been to a maze and that experience made it all the more surprising to them

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.15

In the early 1990s, a secure mobile phone system came into service for the first time, when Thames Valley Police started using a new ‘speech scrambler’ system, following research directed by Professor Joe McGeehan in the Centre for Communications Research. Until this time, it was possible for unauthorised listeners to scan calls from both mobile and fixed telephones. Police and law enforcement services

were being compromised by eavesdropping, posing a threat to their own safety and the effectiveness of operations.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, research had focussed on increasing the quality and reliability of wireless voice communications. There were problems with the privacy and security of calls made from analogue phones; criminals could easily tune in to police and government agency messages, and plan accordingly. Scrambling techniques were needed to prevent eavesdropping but they had to have only a small time delay as it was crucial the first syllable of a message was not lost, have low battery drain, incorporate the highest levels of encryption and be affordable to produce.

In the late 1980s the Home Office invited competitive trials to be undertaken to research a variety of speech scrambler systems. The research of the Bristol team led to the invention of a prototype which won a Prince of Wales Award for Innovation in

From the Engineering Archives

HRH The Prince of Wales, Mr Steve Gould, ProfessorJoe McGeehan, Dr Andy Bateman, Mr Jim Marvill, Mr Simon Jones

17

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.21

The photo shows

Professor Joe McGeehan

receiving the Prince

of Wales award for

innovation from Prince

Charles in 1992. The

presentation took

place at a ceremony at

Highgrove House and

marked a pivitol point

in the development of

mobile phone technology

A third group were working on live ‘hack-ins’ into bands that are working on their music, and the fourth group were working on developing the music with the artists. Seth Jackson said that the results of the sandpit “exceeded expectations” and he was excited to take the novel ideas generated back to PIAS.

First Graduates in the EngD in SystemsIn 2006 the University of Bristol, in collaboration with the University of Bath, was awarded £3.4 million of EPSRC funding to set up the Engineering Doctorate (EngD) Centre in Systems. The programme was launched with a mixture of 11 Research Engineers (REs) and employees, working with companies such as Dstl, Fraser-Nash Consultancy, Halcrow and Buro Happold.

Over the past four years the students have studied the ideas behind Systems thinking and a variety of industry-relevant research methods. Combined with intensive business management skills training, these REs have acquired the necessary tools to conduct the lengthy research on their industry-based projects.

Dr Yun Yin from the University of Bath was the first student to graduate in 2010 and a further four are expected to graduate from the University of Bristol this July. Additional thesis submissions and vivas are in full flow. This success has led the way for a further 50 students and collaborations with over 40 companies.

For the REs themselves it has been a tough but very rewarding process where they learned valuable new skills and a lot more about themselves.

Adam Place demonstrates his group’s music prototype

Euplectella aspergillum - a work of art?

Bristol Institute of Creative TechnologiesThe Bristol Institute of Creative Technologies (BICT) recently welcomed a group of 27 multi-disciplinary participants from the University of Bristol, Pervasive Media Studio and the University of the West of England to undertake a radically collaborative project to address the technical challenge of “The future of the music industry”. The brief, pitched by Seth Jackson, Creative Marketing Director PIAS Entertainment Group, was to prototype a radical innovation that would re-establish the retail relationship between recorded music and its public.

The two-day Sandpit was a pilot in the development of the BICT, a joint venture between the two Universities and the Watershed. The Sandpit was led by Professor Stephen Hoskins, Director of CFPR (UWE), Dr Kirsten Cater, Department of Computer Science (University of Bristol), and Kurt Gauss, Engineering Design and Mathematics (UWE).

Participants were taken through an ideas generation process and then supported to prototype their innovation using UWE’s Centre for Fine Print research labs at Bower Ashton, which includes laser cutting, rapid prototyping, electronics and many other fabrication techniques.

They split into four groups – one working on augmented reality with rapid prototyped printed objects. A second group worked on music in-situ - recording the contextual environment of the person listening to the music to create historical value.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.20

Inspired Engineering at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

How do structures and materials in nature inspire and challenge artists and engineers? What might happen when artistic and engineering thinking come together?

The answers to these questions were explored as part of the University’s ‘Changing Perspectives’ series investigating the relationships between art and science through artistic and academic collaborations.Dr Richard Trask, Lecturer in Multifunctional Materials, Advanced Composites Centre for Innovation and Science (ACCIS) in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, and Ms Lisa Scantlebury, an artist and fabricator (Plenderleith Scantlebury at Spike Island, Bristol) discussed the biological inspirations they are both using to exploit the creative possibilities of advanced fibre reinforced composite materials. For example, the hierarchical organisation of euplectella aspergillum is an example of an effective design strategy for improving the damage tolerance performance of inherently brittle composite materials. Equally, it can be seen as a work of art.

The presenters explained their passion for their own research and how this has evolved into an ongoing art residency within the Faculty of Engineering. Watch this ‘artistic’ space!

This event at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery was supported by Friends of Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives and Friends of Bristol Art Gallery.

.

1992, that was then developed by GEC Marconi Secure Systems into the Marconi Advanced Scrambler (MASC) system. It became the only recommended speech scrambler for UK police forces. The device makes speech private by mixing up the format of bandwidth frequencies as the speech travels between receivers so it cannot be understood by an eavesdropper. The speech is then decoded using an encryption process at the receiver end which unscrambles it and allows authorised listeners to hear high quality voice communication without a significant time delay.By 1992 the police were using the scrambler in active service. The device was small and could be incorporated into the Officer’s uniform radio. Although TETRA digital mobile radio started to be introduced in Europe during the 1990s, it was expensive and the speech scrambler allowed forces to convert to digital gradually, as costs came down. The scrambler continues to be used in parts of the world where digital systems are not fully developed.

The scrambler started a new era of greater police security, confidentiality and operational protection, and the encryption techniques involved allowed for the expansion of commercial and personal mobile phone usage to the degree we see today.

In developing the signal processing and audio spectrum manipulation techniques used in the speech scrambler, a large number of other technical challenges and innovations arose which ultimately formed the basis of technologies used in 3G, WiFi and smart antennas.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

Ly

nc

hP

in

Bri

sto

l En

gin

ee

rin

g

.

– macro properties” is essential to optimised materials performance. Having collected a number of experimental observations and models relating the last two elements of the chain, Dmitry intends to incorporate manufacturing issues in his framework.

Beside work, Dmitry is occupied with learning Farsi from his wife, baby language from his son, and multi-scale philosophy from both of them. He also enjoys hiking and is looking forward to exploring the internal architecture and topology of Bristol and its neighbourhoods.

Paul Ayres joined the Public Relations Office in February as the Web and New Media Officer supporting both the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law.

Paul joins the Faculty after spending a decade working for the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol. He worked across a number of web projects and services primarily supporting students to make more intelligent use of the Internet. This included the Virtual Training Suite of online tutorials that are designed to help students develop their internet research skills and feature a number of engineering titles.

Paul is a graduate of the University with a BA in History and an MSc in Information and Library Management.

Outside of work, Paul is an avid reader particularly enjoying the comic fantasy books of Terry Pratchett, which helps him cope with the ups and downs of following Arsenal FC.

Patrick Townsend started out in IT working for a Bristol based technology company utilising the Inmos Transputer in the late 1980s. Following a brief stint as an itinerant fruit picker in the Antipodes he decided to return to the UK and get a proper job. Working for computer retailers was not it, so Patrick joined the Department of Physics at the University of Bristol as a computer technician in 1996. Following seven years of employment in Electrical and Electronic Engineering as a Computer Systems Officer, he now works for IT Services managing the team delivering IT support to Zone E which encompasses the Faculty of Engineering.

Patrick lives in Bristol. He is now on his third campervan which he imported from Belgium as a hobby project. The fourth year of restoration sees it MOTable and habitable. A successful trip to Hanover, Germany in Easter 2010, has filled him with confidence and this year the West of Ireland and North Spain beckon. When not getting covered in engine oil he enjoys walking hills with his wife Lisa and keeping their two cats Florence and Pascal entertained. Growing fruit and vegetables keep his fingers nominally green.

Dmitry Ivanov joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering in May 2010 as a lecturer in composite manufacturing. Previously, he had been a post-doc at University of Leuven, Belgium (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), where he defended his PhD devoted to investigation of damage in textile composites. Before coming to Belgium, he had graduated from Aerospace Department of Perm State Technical University, Russia.

Dmitry’s main research focus is multi-scale analysis of hierarchical materials including various textiles and textile composites (such as woven, stitched, braided). Enormous diversity of possible architectures demands good understanding of how internal geometry is linked to composite properties. Subtle geometrical changes of internal geometry controlled (or not controlled) by manufacturing parameters are capable to redirect microscopic load flow and switch on different mechanisms of material response, deformation, and failure. Hence, the chain: “manufacturing – micro architecture/geometry/defects

LynchPin welcomes

three members of

staff to the Faculty

Mr Patrick Townsend

Dr Dmitry Ivanov

Mr Paul Ayres

22

fac

ult

y p

eo

ple 23

Speaking personally

ANN

PET

HERS

What are you most proud of?As with most parents, it’s the children. They’re reaching adulthood now, so I guess it’s being able to set them off in the world with a chance to make a success at something. Whether they do achieve or not is down to them but at least we have given them the foundations for it. Hopefully without them being too psychologically scarred!

If you could change one thing...?I would change the sequence in which we run our adult lives - so we get more free time (and cash, somehow) when we are in our prime to devote to family/personal time, and do the career thing in later life.

What single event has most changed your life?Having children is the key thing, but my career move from academia to IT when I was in my mid-late 20s was also significant.

Which living person most inspires you?Sporting people with exceptional command of skills - Roger Federer, Jonny Wilkinson at his peak, Thierry Gueorgiou (a top orienteer). The great leaders - Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Lady Gaga!

What would you like to see more of?Reading Football Club in the Premiership.

Which single item would you save if your house was on fire?Photo albums and other irreplaceable family items that haven’t transferred to the digital age.

If you could come back in another life, who or what would you be?Either a Time Lord or a modern version of Ernest Shackleton.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?Never give up. Sounds a bit trite but still useful. Another good one is: ‘Don’t Worry’. Worrying is one of the least productive activities you can engage in. (NB Neither of these things is necessarily very easy to achieve!)

Favourite place in the world?The top of Yazghil Sar in the Karakoram Mountains, North West Pakistan. I was part of the expedition which made the first recorded ascent of this 20,000 foot peak in 1987. From the summit you could see the top of K2, Broad Peak and other Karakoram giants.

Where would you rather be now?Trekking in one of the greater mountain ranges of the world (e.g. eastern Himalayas)

What worries you?Work overload. Not being able to enjoy a good quality of life in retirement e.g. not fit enough, or not having the resources to go off trekking for six months at a time..

What makes you smile?My family. Clever word play, puns etc. Perfect comic timing and innuendo. Humphrey Lyttleton was a bit of a hero in that regard.

If money were no object...?I’ve always had an ambition to run a fish farm so I’d set one up in the Dauphine region in the South West Alps. I’d also assemble the world’s largest map library…..

How would you like to be remembered?As an orienteering legend! More realistically (I hope), as a decent human being.

Where and when were you happiest?Probably in my early childhood when we lived in rural Berkshire. We had what seemed at the time like quite a big garden with a few fruit trees and fields all around. My sister and I used to explore together. I clearly remember the winter of 1963, the snowy conditions and the difficulties we had getting to school. It was great playing with all my friends and school was the main time I saw them as they lived what seemed far away across the fields. Actually, it wasn’t far at all, I was just small, and the world seemed much bigger then.

What is your earliest memory?I remember a very early holiday in a caravan that I think was rented from somebody at my father’s workplace. It was tiny but had the most fantastic view over Lulworth Cove. I have this perfect picture in my mind of being able to look out of the window and see the shape of the cove, and the contorted layers of rock in the cliffs. I was probably about four.

What did you want to be when you were a child?Definitely an explorer. I don’t know what sparked it off but I’ve always retained a strong interest in maps and the spatial arrangement of things! Probably to do with my natural curiosity and wanting to know what lay around the next corner.

Describe yourself in four words?Curious, enigmatic, positive, ineloquent.

Peter Foster takes over this month as the Faculty Manager

Interview by Emma Weeks

‘Running figure’ sculpture by local artist Jon Buck

.

foc

us

on

Caroline Higgins, Miguel Rico-Ramirez and Colin Dalton

The University Teaching Awards are presented annually to celebrate and recognise excellent teachers as well as individuals who support teaching and learning. Awards are made in a number of categories and are judged by a panel of Education Directors, chaired by Professor Avril Waterman-Pearson, the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education. This year three members of the Faculty of Engineering received awards.

Colin Dalton - University Teaching and Learning Award. Colin, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, specialises in special effects and animation production and is passionate about the interplay between artistic aspiration and technological innovation. In 2007 Colin introduced the units “Character and Set Design” and “Animation Production”; he devised their curricula and is personally responsible for their content, provision, lectures, administration and assessment. Although highly technical in nature he ensures his course work assignments

are novel, personal and as exciting as possible to engage students in the design process.

Dr Miguel Rico-Ramirez - University Rising Star Award. Miguel, who is a Lecturer in Radar Hydrology and Hydroinformatics with the Department of Civil Engineering, started as an early career lecturer in 2007 but very soon took on a full teaching load. In addition to this he supervises projects, and tutors a number of year groups as well as developing his role as Programme Director for the MEng in Civil Engineering with Study in Europe.He has shown himself to be an excellent, reliable, personable and supportive colleague who holds the respect of everyone.

Caroline Higgins - University Award Recognising Support for Learning and Teaching.Caroline works as Undergraduate Co-ordinator in the Merchant Venturers School of Engineering and has great expertise in the student market which, coupled with her knowledge of the admissions

The University Teaching Awards

process, has made her an invaluable member of the support team. Her perseverance, tact and enthusiasm is often commented on by colleagues and the students adore her. It is in the main thanks to Caroline that the School has such excellent communications with the student body.

Professor Avril Waterman-Pearson said: ‘The Committee received nominations for these awards from across the University and members were very impressed by the quality of the applications received. It proved a very difficult task to select the award winners. All the winners are dedicated teachers and supporters of teaching, and are providing an outstanding educational experience for their students.’

The University Teaching Awards were presented at the University’s Learning and Teaching Exhibition on 6 April in the Social Sciences Complex.

For more information on the three winners see: http://www.bris.ac.uk/esu/academicdevelopment/prizes/awardwinnersleaflet10.pdf>