Research

Consortium on Risk in the Environment: Diagnostics, Integration, Benchmarking, Learning and Elicitation.  Please visit the project page for further information.

Engineers Without Borders reinforces international development at the undergraduate level and is one of the largest and most successful student groups within the University.  The group address water and sanitation challenges in the developing world through research programmes and overseas development projects.

The group plays leading coordination and technical roles in Flood Risk Management Research Consortium (FRMRC).  Effective management of the earth’s water systems and their interaction with society is pivotal to sustainable development.

The University has expertise in hydrological modelling, in addition to the design and maintenance of water infrastructure such as dams and coastal defence systems.

The cool ice pig application of technology in the water industry is rapidly being adopted throughout the world as the potable pipe cleaning method of choice.

• Sponsor: Renishaw Sir David McMurtry
• Funding: £90000
• Start: 01/10/2009
• End: 01/04/2013
• Co-investigator: Julian Booker

Summary

The chief aim of this 4-year project is to develop the pico-hydro generation unit through a PhD at Bristol and associated final year electrical and mechanical engineering projects. This will occur under continuous steer and evaluation by Engineers Without Borders (EWB) and users of pico-hydro power devices. EWB will provide the PhD student with development placements in hydro-energy projects. One key goal of the PhD work is to prepare suitable technology so that EWB can trial the technology with their partners (e.g. Centre for Rural Technologies, Nepal), train people (e.g. in conjunction with oversees Universities), and assess applicability in EWB target areas, by conducting placing MSc projects in leading UK development research groups and conducting undergraduate placements.

• Sponsor: EPSRC CASE and Corus UK
• Reference: 08000726
• Funding: £63789
• Start: 01/01/2009
• End: 31/07/2012
• Principal investigator: Julian Booker
• Co-investigator: David Smith
• Research student: Martin Mcmillan

Summary

A shrink-fit is a semi-permanent assembly that is constructed to resist the relative movement between two components, such as a sleeve and shaft. The shrink-fit process creates high radial pressures at the interface between constituent parts. The process is a low cost method and is usually done by expansion of the sleeve by heating or cooling of the shaft. However, shrink-fits must be properly designed and produced in order to achieve the required functionality in a consistent manner.

In the hot steel rolling industry, hard wearing cast iron sleeves are often shrink-fitted to shafts so that wear and damage is limited to the sleeve. Also after many rolling campaigns the sleeve can easily be replaced. There are however potential circumstances where sleeves move, particularly during their initial use. This increases the likelihood of sleeves not only rotating relative the shaft but also moving along the axis of the shaft. In either case there is incorrect transmission of the load to the hot steel work piece, as well as the initiation and growth of fretting cracks between the sleeve and shaft. During service there is also the potential for reduction of the initial high radial pressure through thermal heating, again leading to loss of interface pressure. Finally sleeves removal can occur very suddenly suggesting and it is important to manage this process more safely.

The objectives of the research are as follows:

• Determine the optimum conditions for shrink fitting of typical sleeves to shafts
• Establish the thermal and mechanical conditions that would degrade the shrink-fit performance

Aquatest: University of Bristol received a US $13 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the development of a cheap, easy to use, water quality test device.