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Several National Statistics Agencies (NSAs) in Europe now use tools based on UWE research to ensure published tables are protected from hacking attempts to breach data privacy. Provision of high-quality data to policy and decision makers is so important that supplying it to NSAs is often mandatory for organisations and individuals. In return, NSAs, such as the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS), must guarantee a degree of confidentiality. Our research has benefitted ONS, its clients and data providers, by exposing serious flaws in existing methodologies and techniques for protecting confidentiality and by creating tools for (i) auditing and (ii) protecting large complex tables.
The waves group in the Mathematics Department at Imperial College London has developed methodology in several areas, including novel absorbing layer techniques and Hybrid methods (with Rolls Royce and CEA) for Finite Element software, and efficient techniques for finding the properties of waves in curved plates, bars and pipes. The impact is facilitated by a long-standing research collaboration with the Non-destructive Evaluation group in the Mechanical Engineering department, incorporated with industrial partners through the UK Research Centre in Non- Destructive Evaluation (https://www.rcnde.ac.uk). Our work has been directly implemented in DISPERSE — the world leading software modelling tool for guided stress waves (licensed by Imperial Consultants) — and by Rolls-Royce. [text removed for publication]. Rolls-Royce use the models for improved inspection techniques, resulting in reduced man hour costs and multiple £50Ks of equipment savings.
Rolls-Royce uses the HYDRA computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code for the design of all of its new gas turbine engines. The HYDRA CFD package, including the mathematical theory behind it, was developed by Professor Mike Giles and his research team in the period 1998-2004 at the University of Oxford, and subsequently transferred to Rolls-Royce, forming the basis of the RR corporate CFD strategy with an investment of over 100 person years in development.
Since 2009, HYDRA has become the standard aerodynamic design tool across Rolls-Royce, and has been used to design Rolls-Royce's Trent 1000 engine and the newer Trent XWB. HYDRA has enabled Rolls-Royce to save over [text removed for publication] in test rig expenses, provides superior accuracy compared to its competitors such as FLUENT, and has contributed to increases in engine efficiency of up to [text removed for publication], which in turn has led to higher sales and increased revenue for Rolls-Royce.
Research carried out at the University of Southampton has enabled major players in the aerospace industry — among them Rolls-Royce, Airbus, and Boeing — to produce more fuel efficient, longer lasting engines and aircraft at reduced cost. The research has provided the aerospace industry with modelling tools and software enabling companies to explore complex new designs quickly whilst managing product risk in a competitive market. The research team has also developed new design processes for unmanned aircraft, which — as a result of strong media interest - improved public understanding of such new technologies through worldwide coverage. A spin-out company has achieved strong technological and economic impacts in its own right.
Spatial decomposition methods have been extended to apply to spatial, scale, and temporal domains as a result of work at the Numerical and Applied Mathematics Research Unit (NAMU) at the University of Greenwich. This work has led to a numerical framework for tackling many nonlinear problems which have been key bottlenecks in software design and scientific computing. The work has benefitted the welding industry in the UK because these concepts are now embedded, with parallel computing, in the industry's modern welding design process software.
Research on designing mathematical methods for optimisation carried out at the University of Southampton has been fundamental to the development of software solutions for transportation problems and has directly led to the growth and commercial success of the niche software company, Logical Transport. Additional beneficiaries are local councils — who have obtained school bus schedules that typically reduced the number of required vehicles by 10-20% and miles driven by 12-15% and have an information management tool for better decision making — and passengers who have experienced improved service quality.
Research in the HWCS Intelligent Systems Lab since 2006 has developed approaches to accelerate and improve large-scale optimization. This has led to new algorithms that enable multiple high-quality solutions for complex problems, either more quickly, with better solution quality than previously obtainable, or both. These algorithms, combined with uncertainty quantification techniques from related research, have been adopted by both British Petroleum Plc (BP) and Epistemy Ltd (an SME serving the oil/gas sector). Impact for BP includes improved business decision-making (relating to ~$330M in turnover),and impact for Epistemy includes sales of £230k.
Our work has facilitated the creation of a variety of innovative control strategies for First Hydro Company (FHC), owner of Europe's largest pump storage plant. FHC's two plants are both supported by the simulation platform developed as part of our research and responsible for balancing load variation on the National Grid. Critically, FHC's business model relies on their ability to provide ancillary services within a short time. Our research produced a comprehensive plant model, and was used to enhance the dynamic response of the Dinorwig station; this resulted in improvement in National Grid stability and has provided competitive advantages to FHC since 2008.
From 1995 Professor Munjiza's research at QMUL has led to the development of a series of algorithms which can predict the movement and relationship between objects. These algorithms have been commercialised by a range of international engineering and software companies including Orica, the world's leading blasting systems provider (via their MBM software package), and the software modelling company, Dassault Systems (via their Abaqus software). Through these commercialisation routes Munjiza's work has generated significant economic impact which is global in nature. For example, his predictive algorithms have enabled safer, more productive blast mining for Orica's clients — in one mine alone, software based on Munjiza's modelling approach has meant a 10% increase in productivity, a 7% reduction in costs and an annual saving of $2.8 million. It has also been used in Dassault Systems' Abaqus modelling software, which is the world's leading generic simulation software used to solve a wide variety of industrial problems across the defence, automobile, construction, aerospace and chemicals sectors with associated economic impact.
Full-waveform inversion (FWI) is a seismic technique for exploring the interior of the Earth; it has been developed at Imperial College over two decades, from a promising concept into a fully commercialised industrial process that has been widely adopted across the petroleum industry. The technique improves both the spatial resolution and the fidelity with which the sub-surface can be imaged in three dimensions. All the major multinational petroleum companies now use FWI internally, and all the major oil-field service companies offer the technology to the wider industry. Since its first commercial uptake in 2008, its application has influenced at least one hundred drilling decisions worldwide, and as a consequence it has generated additional value of at least $500M within the petroleum industry.