A postgraduate student from the University of Bristol’s Department of Engineering Mathematics has been awarded ‘best presentation’ at the annual Airbus PhD Day.
Chris Howcroft was one of four students who presented at the day, which has run since 2008. The event is an opportunity for Airbus-sponsored PhD students from across Europe - France, Germany, Spain and the UK – to showcase their research.
The University was amongst the best represented universities, with six PhD students presenting posters. This included four students, Sarah Kewley and Stephen Gill from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Nandor Terkovics, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Chris Howcroft, who are currently engaged in projects exploiting nonlinear dynamics techniques to provide further insight into engineering problems. The supervisors of the projects are Dr Mark Lowenberg, Aerospace Engineering, Dr Simon Neild, Mechanical Engineering and Professor Bernd Krauskopf, Visiting Professor in Engineering Mathematics.
Eight students were selected by Airbus to give a presentation and Chris Howcroft spoke on the sensitivity of aircraft landing gear shimmy vibrations to freeplay in the torque links. At the end of the day, Michael Schoenwetter, Chairman of the awards jury and Head of Airbus Research and Technology Partnerships, announced that Chris was the winner of the award for ‘best presentation’.
Dr Mark Lowenberg, Reader in Flight Dynamics in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, said: “We were delighted Chris was awarded ‘best presentation’. It is a well-deserved outcome and a mark of recognition for Chris' research and presentation skills.”
The research activity with Airbus on nonlinear dynamics began in 2006, with a focus on aircraft landing gear and ground dynamics. To date, three PhD students have graduated, including
Etienne Coetzee, who won a University Faculty Research Prize in 2011, and more than a dozen journal papers have been published.
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