Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

In order to save fuel, aircraft components have to be designed to have as little weight as possible, but to keep us safe they have to be completely reliable. If a particular component has to withstand a certain amount of force, then to safely make it smaller (to save weight) we have to increase the strength of the material it's made from. Unfortunately as components become smaller, and as the strength of materials increases, they become very sensitive to the presence of small cracks, voids or foreign objects ('defects'); even something 20 thousandths of a mm across can start a crack which causes a component to fail prematurely. So improving the quality of these materials not only makes flying safer but also reduces the amount of fuel used and the pollution produced. That's just one example, but it also applies to the turbines in power stations, the chemical industry, and oil and gas rigs. All of these applications use material made by Vacuum Arc Remelting (VAR). VAR uses electrical power to slowly melt and resolidify a large cylindrical block of material (an 'ingot', typically a few tonnes) in a controlled way which dramatically improves its quality. Other important processes, such as manufacturing aluminium, have many similarities.During VAR a large amount of molten metal is present in a pool at the top of the ingot, and the way in which this flows and solidifies greatly affects the quality of the final product. The electrical currents used to heat the metal also cause magnetic fields within it, and the combination of these fields, the current itself, and variations in temperature lead to forces within the liquid metal causing complicated patterns of motion. These patterns had been thought to be symmetric around the central axis of the molten pool, but recent work indicates that this is not the case. Unfortunately there is not yet enough data to decide how far the flow deviates from symmetry, or what causes the asymmetry, and existing process models are not powerful enough to use this information. Because of the high temperatures during VAR, and because it needs to happen inside a sealed vacuum chamber (as it's Vacuum arc remelting), it's also very difficult to measure what's happening. However through a recently-finished programme, sensors have been developed which can be placed outside of VAR equipment but still detect where the electrical current is flowing within. These need to be developed further, and the data from them combined with data from other sensors such as video cameras and temperature sensors and used within a computer model to give a clearer overall understanding. Once we know what's going on electrically, we need to understand how it affects the quality of the material produced, again using modelling. We also want to know what controls the electrical behaviour so that we can come up with ways to modify it if necessary.Through this programme we want to develop the sensors and apply them to furnaces which make advanced steel and nickel alloys, and to develop a new type of computer model that does not assume that the behaviour is the same all the way round the top of the ingot, and does not assume that the behaviour is the same at all times. The model will specially have the ability to predict very small details about how the metal solidifies (called the 'microstructure' of the metal) that are important for determining how well the metal will perform. We want to use the sensors and the computer model to help the factories which use VAR to make better quality products. We also want to develop ways of controlling VAR, to improve product quality even more. The model will also be very useful for other processes and other metals; we also believe that this kind of model, the science behind it, and the techniques we will have developed will also be useful to scientists studying many other analogous problems, such as flow during tissue growth in bioscaffolds.

Power electronics and electrical machines are key components in a low-carbon future, enabling energy-efficient conversion and control solutions for a wide variety of energy and transportation applications. The strength of the UK manufacturing base and its strategic importance to the UK was highlighted in the UK government strategy document "Power Electronics: A Strategy for Success" (UK government Department for Business Innovation and Skills, October 2011). This calls for concerted action across the industrial and academic communities to ensure that the full potential of this growing global market can be realised for the UK economy. Specific recommendations relevant to the UK academic community include: 1) the development of a co-ordinated strategy for postgraduate training; 2) support for research focussing on underpinning the core technology areas whilst ensuring that the national capability in Power Electronics remains internationally leading; 3) establishment of a Virtual Centre linking world-class UK universities with each other and with industry. A core team including the universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Greenwich, Imperial College, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, Strathclyde and Warwick, has been formed to develop this proposal for a UK Virtual Centre. Our vision is that the Centre will be the UK's internationally recognised provider of world-leading, underpinning power electronics research, combining the UK's best academic talent. It will focus on sustaining and growing power electronics in the UK by delivering transformative and exploitable new technologies, highly skilled people and by providing long-term strategic value to the UK power electronics industry. Centre activities will be divided into three main strands: research, community and pathways to impact. Our research activities will bring together the leading academic research groups from across the UK to address key research challenges, build critical mass and develop a widely recognised internationally leading research capability. We will develop a UK research strategy for power electronics which will build on foresight activities to inform our research direction. Our community support activities will build capacity through the training of researchers at doctoral and postdoctoral level. We will extend our research funding to the broader community through themed calls for pump priming, strategic support and feasibility projects. In addition we will support and coordinate responses to major initiatives from national and international funding bodies. Pathways to impact will include: 1) the establishment and development of the Centre brand and communication mechanisms, 2) the development and implementation of an exploitation plan which benefits UK industry, 3) support for government policy development and 4) the development of collaborative links with key power electronic research teams around the world. The Centre programme focuses on fundamental power electronics research at low technology readiness level (TRL) and hence supports a wide range of application areas with a medium to long-term time horizon. Key challenges to be addressed are: increased efficiency, increased power density, increased robustness, lower electromagnetic interference (EMI), higher levels of integration and lower through life cost. The work programme is split into four high-level themes of Devices, Components, Converters and Drives, each of which will address the key challenges, supported by a coordinating Hub. The themes will deliver the majority of the technical output of the Centre.

The urgent need for EV technology is clear. Consequently, this project is concerned with two key issues, namely the cost and power density of the electrical drive system, both of which are key barriers to bringing EVs to the mass market. To address these issues a great deal of underpinning basic research needs to be carried out. Here, we have analysed and divided the problem into 6 key themes and propose to build a number of demonstrators to showcase the advances made in the underlying science and engineering. We envisage that over the coming decades EVs in one or more variant forms will achieve substantial penetration into European and global automotive markets, particularly for cars and vans. The most significant barrier impeding the commercialisation EVs is currently the cost. Not until cost parity with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles is achieved will it become a seriously viable choice for most consumers. The high cost of EVs is often attributed to the cost of the battery, when in fact the cost of the electrical power train is much higher than that of the ICE vehicle. It is reasonable to assume that that battery technology will improve enormously in response to this massive market opportunity and as a result will cease to be the bottleneck to development as is currently perceived in some quarters. We believe that integration of the electrical systems on an EV will deliver substantial cost reductions to the fledgling EV market Our focus will therefore be on the two major areas of the electrical drive train that is generic to all types of EVs, the electrical motor and the power electronics. Our drivers will be to reduce cost and increase power density, whilst never losing sight of issues concerning manufacturability for a mass market.