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In Europe, there are over a million kilometres of oil pipelines, nearly a million kilometres of railway tracks, 600 offshore platforms and 300 suspension cable bridges. However, these assets are aging as they have been in use for many years and operate under harsh conditions. Brunel research team has advanced ultrasonic non-destructive testing (NDT) which has the ability to inspect buried pipes in their original place without removing the pipes or damaging their surrounding environment. In addition, the research was pursued to improve the NDT of rail tracks, storage tanks, flexible risers in offshore platforms and aircraft wires. The research has been commercially exploited and incorporated into Teletest Focus System Mark III by Plant Integrity Limited. The significant improvement has led Plant Integrity to terminate the sale of Teletest Mark III and introduce a new version, Teletest Focus System Mark IV, to the market in late 2010. Since then, Plant Integrity has doubled its turnover from sales of Teletest Focus System Mark IV from £1 million to £2 million in less than a year.
It is well-known that certain bridges are susceptible to potentially dangerous uncontrolled vibrations; recent examples include London's Millennium Bridge and the Volga Bridge in Volgograd. Correcting such problems after the construction of the bridge can be extremely expensive and time-consuming. Research in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Liverpool has led to a novel approach for predicting such behaviour in advance and then modifying the bridge design so as to avoid it. During the period 2011-12 this research has been incorporated into standard design procedures by industrial companies involved in bridge design. There is an economic impact for the companies concerned (avoiding costly repairs after bridge construction) and a societal impact (improvements in public safety and also avoiding the inconvenience of long-term closure of crucial transport links).
The research is based on a novel, highly non-trivial approach that has been developed to study properties of elastic waves in complex engineered structures with a multi-scale pattern. The work has been taken up by the industrial construction company ICOSTRADE S.R.L. Italy, whose design engineer Dr Gian Felice Giaccu integrated the innovative research ideas into their standard design procedures for complex structures such as multiply supported bridges. Novel designs of wave by- pass systems developed by the Liverpool group have also been embedded in standard algorithms by the industrial software company ENGINSOFT, in the framework of a project led by their project manager Mr. Giovanni Borzi.
Brunel and The Welding Institute (TWI) have been pursuing collaborative research on the use of ultrasonic guided waves for the non-destructive testing of oil & gas pipelines, plates, rails, aircraft wires and other engineering materials since 2003. This successful collaboration has led to the creation in 2009 of the Brunel Innovation Centre (BIC), a joint venture between the two institutions based at TWI headquarters in Great Abington, Cambridgeshire, whose mission is to develop a financially sustainable research facility, drawing on Brunel's existing strengths, to complement and underpin the applied research and development activities at TWI. BIC's very successful operation has led TWI to make a significant re-alignment of their strategy and business model, from being a technology provider offering mostly short-term industrial research and consultancy to their members, to providing medium- and long-term research and postgraduate training at the new National Structural Integrity Research Centre (NSIRC), a joint facility being built at TWI headquarters. TWI received a grant of £22 million from the Regional Growth Fund to fund the new building, complemented by a £10 million investment from their own resources and a £15m HEFCE grant for equipment. NSIRC will become a world-class centre of excellence with a unique, industry-driven, integrated approach to research and postgraduate training in the field of structural integrity.
The impact arises from the study of extreme ocean waves and their interaction with marine structures. It is relevant to the offshore, shipping, coastal and marine renewables industries and has been both economic and regulatory, involving:
(a) The establishment of revised guidelines for the design of new structures / vessels.
(b) Enhancing best practice, both from an economic and a safety perspective.
(c) Reducing the uncertainty in critical design issues, thereby improving overall reliability.
(d) Enabling "end-of-life" extensions for existing structures.
(e) Facilitating the effective decommissioning of redundant structures.
(f) Contributing to the development of new industrial R&D equipment, thereby assisting specialist UK manufacturers to secure international orders.
Edinburgh Designs Ltd., (EDL) was spun-out to exploit ERPE research from the original Wave Power Group. With six staff and an annual turnover approaching £2M EDL has supplied the equipment and control systems for wave tanks in 19 countries including the world's largest computer-controlled wave test facility, the US Navy Manoeuvring and Station Keeping Tank. They are currently completing the world's first circular tank, combining waves with currents in any relative direction, which is operated by the 6 person company, "FloWave" EDL, still run by the founding staff, it is the world-leading supplier of wave-making technology for scientific and recreational facilities.
Guidelines and standards underpinned by Strathclyde research have improved the design, assessment and the safety of marine structures subjected to wave impact in large steep waves. The guidelines and standards are widely used in the design of floating structures, particularly Floating Production, Storage and Offloading vessels (FPSOs) and offshore wind turbines. Since January 2008 the work has impacted the design, strength assessment and failure analysis of fixed offshore oil and gas platforms, renewable energy devices and ships. The guidelines and standards are used by designers to mitigate against damage caused by breaking wave impact, thereby improving the safety of mariners and offshore workers, reducing lost production due to downtime, and cutting the risk of environmental impact due to oil pollution. The research has also been used by Strathclyde researchers in industry-focussed studies, in legal work related to the loss of the oil tanker Prestige (2009-2013), in the assessment of the Schiehallion FPSO for BP (2010), and design of a Scottish harbour wave screen (2009) that allows ferries to access and stay in the harbour in more severe weather.
Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) is essential for the safe and efficient operation of high-value engineering plant in many engineering sectors. Research into ultrasonic arrays at the University of Bristol has had a major impact on NDT. Exploitation of the techniques developed has directly led to combined sales of around [text removed for publication]. For major end-users of NDT such as Ontario Power Generation, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, the research is leading to reductions in inspection costs, [text removed for publication]. In addition, highly-skilled engineers have been trained through an Engineering Doctorate programme and are now leading the industrial development of new array inspections based on underlying research performed at Bristol.
Large-amplitude horizontally propagating internal solitary waves commonly occur in the interior of the ocean. This case study presents evidence to demonstrate the impact of research conducted by Professor Grimshaw at Loughborough University on the development and utilisation of Korteweg- de Vries (KdV) models of these waves, which has formed the paradigm for the theoretical modelling and practical prediction of these waves.
These waves are highly significant for sediment transport, continental shelf biology and interior ocean mixing, while their associated currents cause strong forces on marine platforms, underwater pipelines and submersibles, and the strong distortion of the density field has a severe impact on acoustic signalling.
The theory developed at Loughborough University has had substantial impact on the strategies developed by marine and naval engineers and scientists in dealing with these issues.
Radiation sources and amplifiers, in the spectral region from microwave to terahertz, are extensively used in UK industry and public sectors such as security, defence, health and the environment. Companies, including e2v Technologies plc. (e2v) and TMD Technologies Ltd. (TMD), have developed and sold new radiation products based on post-1996 research undertaken at the University of Strathclyde. Their devices accessed new frequency ranges with considerable increases in power and bandwidth. The designs were transferred to industry, where devices have been constructed, jobs created, policy changed and considerable investments made. These sources have had extensive beneficial impact through applications in defence, surveillance, materials processing, health sciences and environmental monitoring.
Professor Kim Parker in the Department of Bioengineering has developed Wave Intensity Analysis (WIA) for characterising pressure and flow waves in arteries. It is being used to assess whether patients need interventions to reduce narrowing of their coronary arteries. Conventional diagnoses require the use of a drug that is costly, time consuming to administer and has unpleasant side effects; it cannot be used in some patient groups. WIA obviates the need for the drug and can be used as the sole diagnostic method in more than half of patients. After being assessed in trials involving >2500 patients, the method became commercially available, and is in routine clinical use in 3 continents. It removes the cost of the drug (which can be US$500 per case in some countries), increases throughput by halving the time taken for the procedure, reduces side effects and makes rigorous diagnosis available to patient groups that cannot tolerate the drug and therefore depended on unreliable, imaging-based methods until now.