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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.
Examples are provided of significant impact by the Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Flow Analysis (CMMFA) upon the Marine Renewables and Offshore Wind communities. In particular, CMMFA informed the design of a novel wave energy converter being commercialised for connection to the national grid. CMMFA has also contributed to a study of the design parameters for an offshore wind power station as part of a larger interdisciplinary collaborative research effort. This work responds to and informs the RCUK Energy Programme via underpinning research, capacity building and provision of trained personnel thus enacting UK Government Energy Policy.
Mathematical models of violent flows developed by Dr Mark Cooker at UEA have been adopted by industry. The work enhances the capabilities of coastal engineers to design and repair seawalls and coastal structures, and enhances their interpretation of damage inflicted by storm waves. The research has direct industrial application, and is used to contain, interpret and lessen sea-wave damage to structures. Commercial software has proved inadequate in this field, compared with Cooker's mathematical modelling, because computations alone cannot resolve the brief time- scales and short length-scales over which there are large changes in pressure, and sudden excursions of the liquid as splashes. An example of this impact is the design of an observation gantry exposed to storm waves.
Research on extreme value methods by Heffernan and Tawn at Lancaster, which proved critical in determining the conclusions of the High Court's investigation of the sinking of the M.V. Derbyshire, also identified that design standards for the strength of hatch covers of ocean-going carriers (bulk carriers, ore carriers and combination carriers) needed to be increased by 35%. This new level was set as a worldwide mandatory standard in 2004. During the REF census period this change has impacted on the design of 1720 new carriers and strengthening for the 5830 in service. There have been no sinkings of ocean-going bulk carriers since the new design standards were introduced in 2004, whereas on past evidence over 100 such sinkings of ocean-going bulk carriers would have been expected in the REF census period.
Wave power research at Queen's has led directly to the development of two types of convertor by Aquamarine Power Ltd (Edinburgh) and Voith Hydro Wavegen (Inverness). Direct employment totalling 400 person years has resulted along with hundreds of people in other companies delivering the different phases of the prototype machines. Financed by over £60 million from both the public but mainly the private sectors, this represents 20% of the total investment in wave power worldwide during this period. Internationally recognised success in wave power has led to the establishment of the Queen's team in tidal stream energy and environmental monitoring of marine renewable systems.
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.
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.
Research led by Professors Cawley and Lowe (employed at Imperial College over the whole 1993-2013 period) resulted in guided wave inspection being established as a new non-destructive evaluation (NDE) method. It is used worldwide to screen long lengths of pipework for corrosion, particularly in the petrochemical industry. A spin-out company has been established that employs seven PhD graduates in NDE from Imperial and the technology is also licensed to another company. Turnover on equipment sales 2008-2013 exceeds £50M and the service companies using the equipment generate about £75M pa in revenue worldwide and employ about 300 FTE staff to carry out the inspection. The oil companies benefit from greatly reduced cost of inspection, especially in areas such as insulated, offshore and buried pipes where access is difficult and expensive for conventional inspection methods. Furthermore, the reliability of inspection is significantly improved, leading to major improvements in safety.