A chronological list of research blog posts is shown below.
Posts from the Aerospace Engineering Blog, an outreach blog on the history and technology of aerospace engineering, can be found here.
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Open-source reference rotor library for multi-rotor development and innovation
Wind energy is expected to play a central role in the global transition to low-carbon electricity. Over the past decades, the dominant design for wind turbines has been the single large rotor mounted on a tall tower. However, as turbines continue to grow in size, engineers face increasing challenges related to transportation, manufacturing, structural loads,…
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Hummingbird beak inspired soft robotics
Nature often solves engineering problems in ways that are both elegant and efficient. A striking example can be found in the beak of the hummingbird. When a hummingbird captures an insect, its beak snaps shut with remarkable speed. What is fascinating about this motion is that it does not rely purely on muscular force. Instead,…
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Using origami to explain clicking sounds produced by moths
Moths are not usually thought of as noisy animals, but some species produce rapid bursts of ultrasonic clicks that interact with the echolocation systems of hunting bats. In ermine moths (Yponomeuta), these sounds originate from a small structure on the hindwing known as a tymbal. The mechanics behind how this tiny feature generates sound are…
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Model for kirigami buckling
Kirigami is the sister of the more well-known origami. While origami focuses on creating art out of folding paper, kirigami extends this to allow for cuts to be introduced. Both origami and kirigami have been researched extensively over the last decade to explore potential applications in structural engineering. For example, when a parallel matrix of…
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Gust load alleviation for aircraft wings
Aircraft wings are designed for the worst-case scenario encountered during a service lifetime. Generally, this is a severe gust that occurs only a handful of times but produces significant bending stresses at the wing root to require substantial reinforcement. Because the aircraft spends the majority of its lifetime not experiencing such a rare, extreme load…
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UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship
I am pleased to say that I have been awarded a Future Leaders Fellowship by UK Research & Innovation. The fellowship aims to demonstrate how lightweight and sustainable shell structures can be manufactured from reclaimed-fibre composites, accelerating the sustainable use of composite materials. To achieve this, the project will combine state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies and simulation…
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Multi-rotor wind turbines
A PhD student I am co-supervising (Abdirahman Sheik Hassan) has just published his first paper—a review on multi-rotor wind turbines. To extract more and more energy from the wind, turbine blades are getting longer and longer. This scaling places significant challenges on the materials, manufacturing, testing, transportation, operation, and maintenance of the blades. With blades…
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Prediction of dimple initiation site in shells using digital image correlation
I have just published a new paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A with collaborators at IIT Hyderabad (India). Thin-walled cylinders are used in various engineering applications ranging from fuselages in aircraft to fuel tanks in launch vehicle stages. When thin-walled cylinders are compressed, they are susceptible to buckling and this occurs at…
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BladeUp: an EPSRC Prosperity Partnership
Led by Alberto Pirrera at the Bristol Composites Institute, we’ve been awarded a Prosperity Partnership grant in collaboration with Vestas Wind Systems and LMAT. The BladeUp project will secure the upscaling of wind turbine blade production capacity to meet growing demand in clean wind energy. The project will transform the design and manufacture of wind…