By establishing imaginative synergies between academia and industrial partners, this project will provide leadership in public engagement and social interaction to inspire society by enhancing public appreciation of engineering research, to attract young minds to a fulfilling career in engineering and physical sciences, and to help underrepresented categories access education in STEM subjects. The scientific and technologic innovation coming from engineering and physical sciences is vital for boosting economic growth, improving quality of life and ensuring national security in the UK. To maintain and further enhance UK's international standing in the engineering sector requires higher education institutions to provide a pipeline of highly skilled professionals that can move between engineering disciplines with confidence and fluidity. Regrettably, schools and universities are not currently optimised to meet the demand of such high-skilled individuals, as the graduate-level shortfall is hitting the 20,000 people-per-year mark. A large untapped human capital is represented by women and minority ethnic groups. If the UK is to address its massive skill shortage in engineering and physical sciences, many more young minds need to be enthused and attracted to a career in engineering, and vigorous actions must be planned to involve underrepresented groups. To address these issues, we will design activities to demonstrate the breadth and importance of engineering research, to attract underrepresented groups to careers in engineering and physical sciences, and to facilitate stronger connections between schools and industry. The project will initially bring together Loughborough University and industrial partners BIAS Ltd, DNV GL, and TFM Networks. Other partners will be actively recruited during the project. This project will involve close engagement with schools and policymakers. The activities designed in the work packages will be tailored to support schools to achieve the relevant Gatsby Benchmarks. The Benchmarks were recently formulated by the Careers and Enterprise Company and define a framework of eight guidelines that schools should follow in order to offer top careers guidance to their students. We will make the project results accessible to policymakers in an engaging and influential way by writing a policy brief, which we will advertise on the project website and social media channels. The policy brief will enable Parliament to shape future policies to fill the engineering skills gap in the UK.

The UK presently has the largest installed capacity of offshore wind, accounting for 36% of global capacity in 2017. The offshore wind industry contributed 9.8% of the UK's power in the 3rd quarter of 2019. In the 2019 Offshore Wind Sector Deal, the sector committed to building up to 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030, with an ambition of increasing exports fivefold to £2.6bn. The Committee on Climate Change has recommended an installed capacity of 75 GW by 2050. Nearly all offshore wind turbines installed to date have been mounted on fixed bottom support structures located in water depths up to 60 m. Given the limited availability of suitable sites at such water depths, Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT) will become increasingly important over the next decade to achieve the Offshore Wind Sector Deal goals and to help achieve the UK target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Sector Deal highlights the need for government to develop frameworks to support the advancement of technologies such as FOWT. Physical modelling is a critical tool for the development of a floating offshore wind turbine and is recommended in most development guidelines. This is especially true at early stages of the development of new concept with a technology readiness level (TRL) between 1 and 3. Testing model devices at scale in the controlled environment of a laboratory has many advantages. These include the proof (or otherwise) of novel design concepts, the ability to test in systematically changing conditions and the ability to test in conditions which have low occurrence probabilities (i.e. extreme events). Quantitative measurements of motions and loads on scaled FOWT models can be made with much greater ease and accuracy then at full scale at sea. Qualitative observations are far easier to observe as well. If done correctly these measurements and observations can lead to the evolution of device designs and concepts and reduce the chance of costly failure; if and when devices are eventually deployed at sea. The University of Plymouth COAST laboratory (www.plymouth.ac.uk/coast-laboratory) is a state-of-the-art research facility for the study of wave and current interaction with offshore and coastal structures using scaled physical modelling. It houses the Ocean Basin, a 35 m x 15.5 m tank with a raisable floor that can enable testing at water depths between 0.5 and 3 m. This project will establish the UKFOWTT - UK Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Test facility within the Ocean Basin. In addition to the wave and current generation that COAST can presently deliver, UKFOWTT will add wind generation to COAST. This will consist of a bank of axial fans, mounted on a gantry spanning the tank width and have the ability to generate winds up to 10 m/s, model gusting and have a controllable wind profile. The generator will be moveable vertically from just at the water's surface to approximately 1 m above. It will be rotatable +/- 30 degrees relative to the basin, enabling the influence of wave/current/wind/model alignment to be investigated. The primary purpose of UKFOWTT is to enable both fundamental and applied research in topics related to Floating Offshore Wind. This will be a unique facility within the UK, enabling systematic physical modelling experiments with wind, wave and currents simultaneously. Data collected from physical modelling can improve understanding of the underlying physics, support development of analytical theories and validate advanced numerical models. It is also a low risk method of testing new and novel concepts. UKFOWTT provides the associated instrumentation to support these studies. UKFOWTT will also support research in other sectors of Ocean and Coastal Engineering disciplines, including the Oil and Gas sector, floating wave, tidal and solar energy, autonomous vessels, launch and recovery operations and coastal defenses.

In recent years, the cost of energy produced by renewable supplies has steadily decreased. This factor, together with socio-economical reasons, has made renewable energies increasingly competitive, as confirmed by industry growth figures. Considering wind turbines (WTs), there are some interesting technical challenges associated with the drive to build larger, more durable rotors that produce more energy, in a cheaper, more cost efficient way. The rationale for moving towards larger rotors is that, with current designs, the power generated by WTs is theoretically proportional to the square of the blade length. Furthermore, taller WTs operate at higher altitudes and, on average, at greater wind speeds. Hence, in general, a single rotor can produce more energy than two rotors with half the area. However, larger blades are heavier, more expensive and increasingly prone to greater aerodynamic and inertial forces. In fact, it has been shown that they exhibit a cubic relationship between length and mass, meaning that material costs, inertial and self-weight effects grow faster than the energy output as the blade size increases. In addition, larger blades also have knock-on implications for the design of nacelle components. The wind-field through which the rotor sweeps varies both in time and space. Consequently, the force and torque distributions for the blades exhibit strong peaks at frequencies which are integer multiples of the rotor speed. Additional peaks are induced by lightly damped structural modes. The loads on the blades combine to produce unbalanced loads on the rotor which are transmitted to the hub, main bearing and other drive-train components. These unbalanced loads are a major contribution to the lifetime equivalent fatigue loads for some components which could cause premature structural failure. As the size of the blades increase, the unbalanced loads increase and the frequency of the spectral peaks decrease. Hence, they have an increasing impact as the size of the turbines become bigger. In this scenario, the demand for improvements in blade design is evident. The notion of increasingly mass efficient turbines, which are also able to harvest more energy, is immediately attractive. The viability of a novel adaptive blade concept for use with horizontal axis WTs is studied in this project. By suitably tailoring the elastic response of a blade to the aerodynamic pressure it could be possible to improve a turbine's annual energy production, whilst simultaneously alleviating structural loads. These improvements are obtained in a passive adaptive manner, by exploiting the capabilities that structural anisotropy and geometrically induced couplings provide. In particular, induced elastic twist could be used to vary the angle of attack of the blade sections according to power requirements, i.e. the elastic twist is tailored to change with wind speed proportionally to the bending load. The adaptive behaviour allows the blade geometry to follow the theoretically optimum shape for power generation closely (which varies as a function of the far field wind speed). This concept retains the load alleviation capability of previously proposed designs, whilst simultaneously enhancing energy production. Structurally, the adaptive behaviour is achieved by merging the bend-twist coupling capabilities of off-axis composite plies and of a swept blade planform. Potentially, an adaptive blade, controlled only by generator torque, could perform to power standards comparable to that of the current state-of-the-art-while greatly reducing complexity, cost and maintenance of wind turbines, by challenging the need for active pitch control systems.

It is proposed to establish an innovative Structural Composites Research Facility (SCRF) for faster fatigue or cyclic load testing of large structures. This will initially be focussed on fibre-reinforced composite material structures, such as stiff tidal turbine blades (e.g. fabricated from carbon fibre and glass fibre reinforced polymer resins). The facility will be the first of its kind in the world, and will use a brand new, ultra-efficient digital displacement regenerative pumping hydraulic system. For fatigue testing of tidal turbine blades, the novel hydraulic actuation system will only use 10-15% of the energy input required by conventional hydraulic testing systems, and will test structures 10 times faster than possible with existing hydraulic systems (test frequency increase from 0.1 Hz to 1 Hz). This will enable more and faster impact-led academic research into fundamental engineering options for new materials technology and accelerated evaluation of tidal turbine blades leading to more rapid certification and deployment to market. Such a capability is critical to the success of this emerging composite materials technology for renewable energy and will accelerate the conversion of available tidal marine energy, which is currently under-exploited at a time of increasing national demand for energy. Nationally, the facility will also underpin fundamental research in composite materials across all sectors, to be targeted at applications in high value manufacturing sectors such as aerospace, automotive, and civil engineering applications (e.g., structural health monitoring in bridges and buildings subject to ongoing fatigue under cyclic loading). Academics will benefit by access to a state-of-the art accelerated fatigue testing facility, opening new research opportunities on fundamental materials and process topics. Industry will benefit by reduced design risk from better testing data and by reduction of product testing time, within the product development cycle times needed in the renewable energy, aerospace, naval defence, marine and infrastructure sectors.

With the increasing amount of energy-related infrastructure (oil and gas platforms, wind turbines, cables) installed in the North Sea, there is a need to understand the role these man-made structures (MMS) play in the marine ecosystem. Current decommissioning regulations prohibit leaving installations in place in any form, which means complete removal when no longer in production. However, there are significant knowledge gaps on the effect these MMS have on marine ecosystem function. Central to our understanding of MMS on the ecology of the North Sea, is having a better understanding of the background (baseline or equilibrium position) against which changes in ecosystem processes can be assessed. A few recent studies have identified the role of MMS as artificial reef structures, yet little research has examined the effect of MMS on the largest surrounding habitat - the seabed, its associated biodiversity, and the ecosystem services it provides. Shelf sediments, such as those found in the North Sea, are dominated by sandy permeable sediments, and recent research under the NERC Shelf Seas Biogeochemistry programme established that a significant proportion of 'blue carbon' is held in such shelf sediments. These sediments provide a variety of ecosystem services, from biogeochemical cycling of nutrients, carbon and oxygen; biodiversity (macrofauna, microbial); contaminant deposition; habitat provision; and production of inorganic nutrients to support surface water productivity, underpinning marine food webs and commercial fisheries. The presence and installation of MMS provides protection of the seabed from other human activities, such as trawling and dredging, protecting the seabed from physical disturbance and effectively providing an unofficial 'Marine Protected Area' (MPA). The hydrocarbon extraction activity at MMS influences local biodiversity, particularly changing benthic microbial diversity as a response to the presence and concentration of associated contaminants, and these microorganisms play a vital role in degrading the hydrocarbons within the sediments. Whilst the stability of these sediments and their ability to sequester carbon is uncertain, the decommissioning and physical removal of MMS is likely to disrupt these long term carbon stores, and impact on benthic ecosystem processes. Complete removal of MMS, following current Oslo-Paris (OSPAR) regulations could impact on the hydrodynamics and nutrient cycling at a local scale, negatively affecting biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and ecosystem processes in surrounding sediments. Furthermore, the shelf sediments may be exposed to additional hydrocarbon contaminants either via oil seeps/pipeline leaks or resuspension of oily drill cuttings, and their eventual disturbance and wider impact is relatively unknown. The presence and subsequent removal of MMS will therefore not only likely affect the sediment biogeochemistry but also the marine biodiversity and ecosystem function. This project addresses this knowledge gap through novel technologies (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) and environmental DNA 'eDNA', with modelling of environmental data alongside data from industry (INSITE Interactive and our industry partners) to identify the role of MMS on key marine ecosystem processes. We have a strong team of project partners from industry (Shell, Repsol, INEOS, DNV-GL) and stakeholders (Shetland Oil Terminal Advisory Group, SOTEAG; National Subsea Research Initiative, NSRI). This project has significant support from industry and stakeholders, and a Stakeholder Advisory Group will be established to make full use of this. Recent news reports on UK decommissioning decisions have drawn attention other European oil nations on what is environmentally acceptable, thus the outputs of this project are expected to have international interest and direct policy relevance for future decommissioning.