. LynchPin Bristol Engineering Bristol Engineering .LynchPin Spring 2010 .National Composites Centre - full steam ahead Bristol Engineering LynchPin .02 . LynchPin Spring 2010 LynchPin is produced termly by the Faculty of Engineering, University of Bristol LynchPin team Peter Foster, Melissa Bevan, John McWilliams, Sam Hodder, Carrie Wattling, Sarah Wordsworth Design and production Carrie Wattling Print and reproduction Portishead Press Ltd Printed on Revive 100% recycled paper stock using vegetable based environmentally friendly inks. Cover: Output from the Virtual Fabric Placement model showing how carbon cloth can form to a complex shape LynchPin is available online at www.bris.ac.uk/ engineering/staff/ publicity/lynchpin.html If you are interested in writing an article for LynchPin please contact: [email protected] Well, as the saying goes, we live in will continue the trend we have seen for interesting times. I can remember Joe increasingly bright and enthusiastic students McGeehan saying this when he was Dean. wanting to join us. Maybe it is just my perspective, but it seems a lot more interesting now than it This brings me to our Engineers Without has ever been. Borders students (EWB is becoming a standard feature of my articles), who Since our last issue, the realisation that have been awarded a University Teaching the National Composite Centre is going Award for their Outreach programme. This to be in Bristol has hit us with its full is remarkable; it is the first time students significance. This will place us at the heart have been given a teaching award at this of aircraft, renewable energy and motor University. Fantastic! racing composite design, manufacture and research. It is a tremendous achievement Of course, I cannot complete an article for Bristol Engineering and something that like this without mentioning our changing everyone should celebrate. world. We will all have seen the missives emanating from Whitehall on future budgets Similarly Bristol’s pivotal role through the for Higher Education. Whilst we can’t escape National Microelectronics Institute (NMI) the reality, I am positively encouraged by and the foundation of the UK Electronics our starting point. We are in a considerably PRATT DAVE Skills Foundation (UKESF) is right at the stronger position than all other Engineering heart of what we do: developing people Faculties I’ve seen or spoken to. And this is Clearly there are going to be some twists for industry at the leading edge in their not just in the UK. and turns before we reach equilibrium in the technological discipline. I really am delighted UK, but our own trend is without doubt in a to see that there has been national As a point of reference, I’ve just had a positive direction. We have great students, recognition for this £23 billion per year meeting with my counterpart at one of and research, which has an increasing industry in which Bristol can rightly claim to the major Institutions at the University of presence and recognition. Let’s keep it that Bristol Engineering be at the epicentre of UK activity. California (I’ll not mention which one, to way. spare blushes), who was explaining the trials I suspect these additions to our portfolio and tribulations at his organisation. If we have increased our public visibility. I see that think things are tough in the UK then the undergraduate applications for Engineering cuts in the Golden State have wreaked an at Bristol have risen again. Having seen unimaginable toll on Higher Education, and LynchPin some of the applicants, the quality of our I’m rather glad to be on a plane heading Professor Nick Lieven welcome prospective cohort next year back to the relative prosperity of Bristol. Dean of Engineering .03 04 Newsclips from around 16 Shearwater stake out the Faculty Dr Luca Giuggioli explores the feeding The Intelligent Systems Laboratory, patterns of these long-winged oceanic Breast Cancer Imaging and a review of birds the Research Reception 17 Partners in power 06 Student news Professor Paul Weaver reports on an A round-up of the latest from our exciting year for wind turbine blades 08 11 undergraduates, featuring two exciting expeditions and a Bristol Red. 20 Greener communications Tim Harrold keeps us in touch with the 08 Engineers Without Borders latest developments in mobile phone Peter Cooper brings us all the latest networks news from EWB-Bristol 21 From the archive 11 Engineering Architecture The Shell Motor Mileage Marathon Ian Duncan and his students take a look around the buildings of Berlin 22 Faculty people Computer Support team manager 12 The National Composites Andrew Dixon gets personal Centre 14 Katie Drury provides an overview of this multi-million pound development 24 Focus on renewables New teaching initiatives to address skills shortages 14 The social role of robots Fascinating goings-on at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) 17 24 The latest news and events from around the Faculty Professor Hillary of geophysical surveys. The research team Sillitto includes also Dr Ignazio Cavarretta (RA) and Professor Ian ARUP ANNUAL LECTURE Mr Simon Hamlin (PhD). Craddock 22 April, Pugsley Lecture Theatre, QB Integrated Design - Architects and Engineers Dr Mark Thompson Working Together in a Digital World Breast-cancer imaging talk Tristram Carfrae is a structural engineer, Professor Ian Craddock recently gave Principal and Arup fellow, and is the highly a talk highlighting the potential use of influential engineer behind the design of non-ionising technology being developed The Water Cube - Beijing’s National Aquatics at Bristol for breast-cancer imaging. His Bristol Engineering Centre for the 2008 Olympics. He also audience was a gathering of clinicians and boasts an impressive portfolio of facilities other specialists at the Avon, Somerset and created for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Wiltshire Cancer Research Network Annual including the RAS Exhibition Halls, the Dunc Research Conference. Gray Velodrome, and the Olympic Tennis Centre. His lecture will explore how cross Mike Shere, Chair of the Conference, said LynchPin discipline design can produce excellence. “The talk was absolutely fascinating and it was a pleasure to be able to include Please book tickets in advance by emailing such pioneering work at our conference. [email protected] I sincerely appreciated your approach to the session, ensuring that those in the . Engineering Architecture report, page 11 audience felt inspired by your pioneering 04 work without being confused by what must indeed be a most complicated technological . advancement”. Visiting Professor for Systems Centre fuel and reducing CO2 emissions from the Professor Hillary Sillitto has accepted an aviation industry, and in turn helping reduce Honorary Appointment as Visiting Professor the impact on the environment. at the Systems Centre. Toshiba Research Fellowship Dr Mark Thompson, in the Centre for Professor Paul Weaver, from the Department Hillary is Systems Engineering & Architects Communications Research/Department of Aerospace Engineering and the Advanced (SEA) Manager at the Land & Joint Systems of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Composites Centre for Innovation and Thales UK. He contributes significantly to and the Department of Physics at the Science (ACCIS), is leading the University of the System Thinking, applied to the design University is currently in Japan as part of Bristol team, which includes Dr Kevin Potter of complex systems. He is working with the prestigious Toshiba Research Fellowship, and Dr Stephen Hallett. the Systems Centre in the development of where he is spending one year working advanced systems teaching and research in alongside Toshiba researchers at their R&D The Bristol-based team will be leading the the area of sustainability, as well as defence. Headquarters in Kawasaki, Japan. development and manufacture of the new carbon fibre materials, and the Bath team The Fellowship Programme is a collaboration will be investigating different designs for between Toshiba and the EPSRC, aimed at the structures of wing panels to test their EPSRC grant awarded to fostering and developing the relationship damage tolerance. Both teams will be using Geomechanics between Japanese industry and UK academia. mathematical modelling techniques to A £700k joint research grant on the optimise and test their designs. Micromechanics of seismic wave propagation in granular materials has been awarded by the EPSRC to the Geomechanics £1.4 million Research Award for ACCIS Group (Dr Erdin Ibraim, Professor David Carbon emissions from air travel could be Intelligent Systems Laboratory Muir Wood and Dr Martin Lings) of the reduced thanks to a new collaboration A new Intelligent Systems Laboratory has Department of Civil Engineering and the between engineers from the Universities of been formed in the Faculty of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Bristol and Bath and the aerospace industry. including about 15 members of academic Engineering at Imperial College London (Dr staff and 40 students and postdoctoral Catherine O’Sullivan). This joint research The £1.4 million project will investigate new researchers. Its members work on areas that project will use sophisticated laboratory ways of using composite materials for wing range from machine learning to web agents, testing (at the University of Bristol) and panels in aircraft. The research, funded from data mining to machine translation, advanced numerical modelling (at Imperial by the Engineering & Physical