Lincoln:Engineering Researchers

Lincoln:Engineering at ICMAT 2011 in Singapore

Paul Stewart

ICMAT – The International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technologies will be held at Suntec in Singapore from 26th June to the 1st July 2011.

The conference attracts more than 2000 delegates, including plenary lectures from many Nobel Prizewinners. It is organised by the Materials Research Society of Singapore, and is affiliated to the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS)

Lincoln University will be represented by members of the School of Engineering, and will feature some of the Interdisciplinary work on BioInformatics currently being performed by Prof Paul Stewart in collaboration with Prof Dave Fernig of the University of Liverpool.

Also representing Lincoln will be Dr Colin Dowding of the School of Engineering who will be presenting on Laser Materials Processing for BioMimetics.

Profs Stewart and Fernig will be presenting in:

Symposium: Frontiers in Optical Bio-imaging and Microscopy

The symposium includes cutting edge methodologies in optical, spectroscopic and kinetic imaging microscopy. The methodologies include novel probe techniques as well as novel microscopies. The imaging and spectroscopic methods that will be showcased will be already or could very soon be applied to biological imaging. Imaging methods include: refractive index change, interferometry, tomography (OCT), lifetime imaging, spectral imaging, TERS, SERS, photothermal imaging, STED, PALM, STORM and FIONA, fluorescence plus others.

  • Fernig D.G. and Stewart P.“Heparan sulfate determines the modes of diffusion of fibroblast growth factor 2 within the pericellular matrix”
  • Stewart P. and Fernig D.G. ‘Bio:Eng, Bridging the gaps between engineering and biology’

Dr Dowding and Prof Stewart will be presenting in:

Symposium: Nanoscale Patterning, Assembly, and Surface Modification

More information on the conference can be found at:

http://www.mrs.org.sg/icmat2011/

Energy recovery from landing aircraft

Paul Stewart

This is an EPSRC funded project:

  • EP/H004351/1: Feasibility Study, Energy Recovery from Landing Aircraft. Collaborating company: EADS Innovation Works

which is run by Prof Paul Stewart and Dr David Waugh in the School of Engineering at the University of Lincoln. It is one of a portfolio of projects awarded from the EPSRC Sandpit Low Carbon Airports. All the project researchers and PIs associated with this Sandpit are members of the Airport Energy Technologies Network (AETN), which is hosted here at Lincoln University.

Rationale

On account of the enormous pressures on numerous industries to cut down upon their carbon emissions it is not surprising to identify that one such industry is that of the airline industry. With aircraft transport becoming more widely used, along with aircraft becoming larger (for example the Airbus A380), it is possible for one to realize the large potential gains that recovering energy from aircraft would offer in terms of feeding that energy back into the national grid or storing the energy locally on the aircraft for use in recovered energy assisted take-off.

How much energy is associated with a landing aircraft?

We can make assumptions to illustrate the magnitude of kinetic energy available via a small commercial airliner:

Taking an Airbus A320 with landing mass m = 6.5×104 kg, with landing speed ν = 61.69 ms-1

we can calculate the kinetic energy E = 1.248 J.

Assuming a runway length of 1.2km gives us a linear acceleration of -1.59 ms-2

and a stopping time of 38.80s, which gives us a peak transferrable power of 3.2MW

Therefore, it is possible to realise that for a typical Airbus A320 the potential energy which could be recovered is very large with peak transferable powers of up to 3.2 MW being available. Furthermore, this becomes an even more attractive means when taking into account multiple landings as busy airports which leads to average transferable powers of up to 1 MW. In addition to this, one can see that over time aircraft will become bigger having even larger landing weight, such as the Airbus A380,  which will increase the potential power output by up to 10 times the figures stated here for the Airbus A320


Working the Bank Holiday

Paul Stewart
Thrifty Hire's biggest van parked up in Norwich

Staying over in Norwich tonight before the big event tomorrow, picking up the Free Piston Engine from Lotus Cars after its most recent modifications, fitting the new linear motor/generator.

I’m also meeting a representative from Toyota in Japan with Jamie Turner, Chief Engineer from Lotus, to discuss our free piston work.

I’m going to take the engine over to the ThinkTank in Lincoln tomorrow, where it will be stored in the interim until the move into an engine test cell in August.

Control Techniques, who supplied the electrical drives, will be re-commissioning the experimental rig.

DeVere Dunston Hall Norwich

The Lotus Free Piston Engine project story – people

Paul Stewart
Close up of the Free-Piston Engine, showing timing belt, cam boxes, cylinder head and combustion chamber

After delivery to the engine test cells at Loughborough University AAE dept., it took a significant amount of time to put together the control system instrumentation, and the control architectures necessary to run the engine under Labview, and DSpace.

This part of the story is the people behind developing this part of the project.

First up is Dr Ben Taylor, who at the time was one of my Post-Doctoral researchers at the University of Sheffield Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, and is currently a Research Fellow there in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering. Ben designed and built the 100kW four-quadrant power converter which in the early stages of the project drove the permanent magnet servo-motor attached to the end of the tethering crankshaft. This arrangement allowed us to make the initial development happen relatively safely, without the danger of losing control and blowing up the engine. Later developments are untethered from the crankshaft and truly ‘Free-Piston’

Dr Ben Taylor connecting the 3-phase cables from the power converter to the PMAC servo-motor

Ben also designed the control system for the servo-motor, based around a TI Digital Signal Processor (DSP) which allowed accurate, real-time control of the motor currents, and position/velocity control of the motor, interfaced to a DSpace real-time controller.

Ben subsequently moved on to work for myself and Prof Chris Bingham on a RDA funded project on intelligent heating controls and methods for domestic houses.

The power converter which Ben designed and built is now in use driving the linear electrical machine embedded in the engine, whilst the drive of the crankshaft servo-motor has been take over by a custom designed four-quadrant inverter designed and installed by Control Techniques

Stage 1 development of the free-piston engine: engine and power converter.

 

Dr Ben Taylor with the control/data acquisition system

Major new KTP for the School of Engineering

Paul Stewart

Dr Jill Stewart, Senior Lecturer in Thermofluids in the School of Engineering has secured a 3-year KTP grant in collaboration with Napier Turbochargers Lincoln.

The project will develop a design methodology of turbocharger compressor impellers that are resilient to typical manufacturing tolerances thus maintaining efficiency and reducing manufacturing non-conformance cost.

The project is anticipated to commence in August 2011

Napier Turbochargers is a wholly self-owned company, having previously been owned by Siemens Power Generation, specifically Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery Ltd being based on the same site in Lincoln when it bought the neighbouring Alstom Power Turbines in March 2003; Alstom (former GEC-Alsthom) had owned the company since GEC bought English Electric in the late 1960s.