Sensors for Through-Life Engineering

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This Fellowship will develop new approaches to verifying and validating sensor concepts for assessing the integrity and status of engineering products and systems throughout their lifecycles, in particular with respect to structural health management (SHM). Such condition monitoring technology is vital for health management of high value and safety critical systems and structures. No coherent approach for its verification and validation yet exists. Moreover, the ability to closely monitor engineering assets with increasing detail and pervasiveness offers a path to revolutionary new design concepts where health monitoring functionality can be incorporated into the fundamental manufacturing design philosophies. This fellowship addresses both of these themes. They are linked by the common need for completely dependable sensing throughout the life of the product. The Fellowship will help establish a strong academic career for the applicant while exploiting his knowledge and long experience at the heart of manufacturing industry and his unique expertise in research, development and validation of sensors for manufacturing applications.New approaches will be developed for efficiently validating emerging sensing concepts through experimental and model based methods firmly linked to the end-use and operational requirements. It will provide a framework in which devices and systems at preliminary stages of development can be 'road-tested' to aid decisions early in the device development. In addition, the impact of built-in sensing function on fundamental design principles and production/manufacturing techniques for selected engineering products will be explored and demonstrated at laboratory scale. In achieving this, the research will fill a perceived gap in the UK between technology focussed research in sensor techniques in universities and industrial R&D and the end user requirements and constraints. The Fellowship will act as a springboard for creating a new capability in the UK at Cranfield University for experimental verification and validation of condition monitoring sensors with multi-industry relevance. The Fellowship will allow creation of a novel body of scientific knowledge in sensor verification while drawing together many of the strands of current, ad-hoc industry and research experience. The capacity of in-built sensing to transform approaches to design and through-life sustainment of engineering systems such as safety critical structures will also be revealed and demonstrated as part the work. The five year research programme is intended to establish the applicant as an academic leader and will exploit his long experience in industry to influence and create new thinking within the university environment. His thought leadership exercised by interaction with the other EPSRC and IVHM centres at Cranfield as well as teching, will help bridge the gap between academic research and beneficiaries by linking user needs in respect of health monitoring technologies with the fundamantals of through-life processes from design and manufacture to life extension. It will generate further high quality research relating to through life engineering and manufacture.