Category / Fusion

Sustainable Design Research Centre New Experimental Resources for Research & Education

BU research, Fusion, PG research

Sustainable Design Research Centre

Faculty of Science & Technology

Newly Added and Commissioned Experimental Resources for Research & Education

The following new equipment have been recently added to the lab resources for both research & education. Two PhD research projects in Renewable Technology (Heat Transfer and Thermodynamic Expansion) and one Research Assistant within SDRC are fully funded by industrial partner FES Ltd [Dr Zulfiqar Khan, PI]. This research informs education within the Design & Engineering Framework, MEng Programme, through Level I Thermo-fluids & Heat Transfer (20 Credit) unit led by Dr Zulfiqar Khan.

These equipment are significant addition for enhancing students’ experience and providing a vehicle for realising BU Fusion initiative.

PIPE FRICTION APPARATUS

The experimentation stand can be used to investigate pipe frictional losses with laminar and turbulent flows. The pipe section is a brass pipe with an internal diameter of 3 mm. The distance between the pressure measuring fittings and thus the length of the experimental pipe section is 400 mm.

The pressure losses for laminar flow are measured using a water manometer. The static pressure difference is displayed. A head tank is available to create a laminar flow and ensures a constant water inlet pressure in the pipe section at a constant water level.

For turbulent flow, the pressure difference is measured using a dial manometer. The head tank is not used to create a turbulent flow. The water is fed directly into the pipe section from the water supply via a bypass. The flow is adjusted using shut-off valves at the beginning and end of the pipe. The water supply is provided either by the Basic Hydraulics Module or from the mains supply in the laboratory.

BERNOULLI’S PRINCIPLE DEMONSTRATOR

The equipment is used to investigate Bernoulli’s law. The measurement object is a Venturi nozzle with six pressure measurement points. The six static pressures are displayed on a board with six water pressure gauges. The overall pressure can also be measured at various locations in the Venturi nozzle and indicated on a second water pressure gauge. Measurement is by way of a probe which can be moved axially with respect to the Venturi nozzle. The probe is sealed by way of a compression gland. Water is supplied either from the Fluid Mechanics Basic Module or from the laboratory mains.

The equipment enables a closed water circuit to be constructed.

Possible experiments:

  1. Demonstration of Bernoulli’s law
  2. Pressure measurements along Venturi nozzle
  3. Determination of flow rate factor K

[The above information are provided by GUNT Publication-no.: 917.000 01 A 150 12 (A) Experiment instructions HM 150.01 Pipe Friction Apparatus & Experiment Instructions HM 150.07 Bernoulli’s Principle Demonstrator].

If you have interest in Renewable Technology research & education and would like to find more about the activities within the Sustainable Design Research Centre, then please contact.

Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor)

Director SDRC

Bournemouth European Network in Cyber Security (BENICS)

BU research, EU, Fusion, Uncategorized

In recent years, the field of Cybersecurity has attracted researchers and practitioners from academic fields ranging from Computer Science and Design, through to Psychology and Business Studies. To date, however, these communities have not been influenced by each other. Their research are disseminated in a variety of workshops and conferences across these fields. As a result, there is a misunderstanding of the role these different fields play in improving cybersecurity. For example, some researchers describe people are “the weakest link” and encourage designers to build systems that “Homer Simpson” can use safely. Unfortunately, treating users as a problem limits opportunities for innovation when people are engaged as part of a solution. Similarly, treating practitioners like cartoon characters disenfranchises the very people that a design is meant to support. Bournemouth University is one of the few institutions in the world with interests across the disciplines contributing to Cybersecurity, a small enough size for academics across these disciplines to engage with each other, and the vision necessary to fuel this engagement. To take advantage of the opportunities afforded to Bournemouth, an interdisciplinary seminar series in cybersecurity was launched in September 2013. The seminar series has attracted both staff and students from across the university, together with practitioners from local industry with interests in cybersecurity. So far, this has led to connections forming across the Faculty of Science & Technology, and the Media and Business schools. Resulting collaborations with our seminar speakers have also led to prospective KTP and Horizon 2020 proposals, and invitations to deliver guest lectures at other universities.

To build on this momentum in interdisciplinary cybersecurity activity at Bournemouth, we have created the Bournemouth European Network for Interdisciplinary Cyber Security (BENICS): a FUSION funded SMN activity. Over the coming year, BENICS will bring five invited European cybersecurity academics to Bournemouth to engage in short (one-week), focused collaborative visits. These visits will introduce invited academics to Bournemouth’s cybersecurity capabilities, allow them to share their interests with us as part of the cybersecurity seminar series, and engage in short and focused proposal building, research, or teaching resource creation activities.

Following each visit, Bournemouth and the visiting academic will engage in pump-priming activities; these will refine deliverables produced to sustain the momentum created during the visit. These deliverables will form the basis of a joint publication at an agreed international conference or journal.

Watch this space for more information about these visits, and please get in touch if you’re interested in engaging with BENICS and our cybersecurity research in general.

Sustainable Design Research Centre – Faculty of Science & Technology Research Seminar

BU research, Fusion, PG research

Date: 02/04/2014

Time: 12:00 – 12:30

Venue: PG 22

Title: Renewable energy goes global – what is wrong with the wind turbines?

 Abstract:

As a fast growing renewable energy source, wind turbines have undergone significant development over the past thirty years providing a suitable portion of renewable energy in many countries. However, the world’s demand for wind energy supply will continue to increase in the next five to ten years. To increase the production efficiency, wind turbine manufacturers have been focusing on the increase of output power from individual turbines. Larger and heavier gearboxes are being put up ‘in the air’ (on the top of high towers), which has unfortunately been accompanied by an escalation of tribological issues related to wear and lubrication in the drivetrain systems. The unsatisfactory performance and reliability of wind turbines are threatening the sustainability of wind energy globally. Wind turbine failure, white structure flaking (WSF), has been found to limit the lives of a large number of wind turbine gearboxes from the design life of over 20 years to as short as 6 months to 2 years and the premature failure has a huge impact on the reliability of wind turbines and the cost of wind energy due to its frequent occurrences and high cost involved (at £300k per gearbox replacement). This talk presents the research on WSF at University of Southampton.

Brief bio:

Dr Ling Wang is a lecturer in condition monitoring of tribological systems at the national Centre for Advanced Tribology at Southampton (nCATS), Engineering Sciences Academic Unit, Faculty of Engineering and the Environment since 2007. She has published over 80 peer reviewed papers and conducted collaborative research projects with a wide range of industrial partners including Rolls-Royce plc. GE Aviation, Vestas Wind Systems, Shell Global Solutions, Afton Chemical Corporation, BP and Agusta Westland.

These seminars are organised by the University Sustainable Design Research Centre in the Faculty of Science & Technology to provide a platform for disseminating latest research activities and results. These seminars are good opportunity of networking for both BU staff and students.

If you would like further information on research activities in corrosion, corrosion simulation and corrosion monitoring please visit SDRC webpage. For any specific inquiries please contact

Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor)

Director Sustainable Design Research Centre

Fusion – Exploring Histories of Women’s Radio in Europe

BU research, Fusion

I am delighted to report that I, and my Co-investigator Dr Kate Murphy, have been successful in our Fusion Investment Fund bid, which will support an international academic research network Women’s Radio in Europe Network (WREN) that I have played a key part in developing since 2012.

WREN investigates the history and role of women’s radio in Europe and at the centre of this inquiry stands the idea of radio’s double articulation as both (domestic) technology and medium of communication. Women broadcasters and women’s radio provides a lens through which a number of histories and transnational flows can be analysed. Up till now, most women’s radio histories have mainly been examined within national contexts or narratives. These highlight the important role played by women’s radio in times of social change, financial and political crisis and modernisation. Yet, there has been no systematic research to the various patterns of transnational circulation mediated through women’s radio, nor a sustained comparative research. A vital aspect of WREN’s work is making these transnational connections between women, radio and society visible and accessible to researchers, practitioners and publics.

Funding was sought from the Staff Mobility and Networking Strand (SMN) and will enable a WREN workshop to be held at BU in the autumn (2014). WREN currently includes active members from the UK, Netherlands, Turkey, Denmark, Portugal, USA and Australia. The aim of WREN is to develop international collaborative research exploring women’s radio histories. The fusion funding will enable us to organise the first stand alone meeting of the network at BU. The aim of this meeting is to further develop plans for publications, bids for future external funding, and to build and develop our current web presence (http://womensradioineurope.org/). The workshop will also include an open seminar to which staff and students will be invited to attend. This is exciting news and I am looking forward to start planning and preparing!

Dr Kristin Skoog Lecturer in Media (Broadcasting History) – The Media School

 

 

Workshop on Streaming Analytics Thursday 13th March 10:30.

BU research, EU, Fusion, PG research, Research news, Uncategorized

As part of a collaboration between BU and several other EU based universities and intitutions we will be hosting SAAT 2014 a workshop on the emerging area of streaming analytics. The workshop is open to all for the first day (the second day is taken up with management meetings). The focus of this workshop is on the technical aspects of how to provide streaming analytics.

Scalability and responsiveness of algorithms and architectures for large scale data streams are fundamental to harvesting the power of data generated in real-time networks. The workshop seeks to bring together industry and academic partners to explore specifically the requirements of data processing, the real-world target applications and develop from there the techniques required. The scope thus includes applications, scaling algorithms, streaming platforms, integration of streaming and batch algorithms, graph partitioning together with machine learning for streaming, concept drift and dynamic data analysis. Additional topics such as security issues and tool and platform development are of interest.

Aims:
The key aims in this workshop are several fold. Primarily we seek to identify the key issues associated real world streams of data, including key target applications. Integrated  solutions, combining appropriate topics from the scope which target likely directions in this field is the end goal. Specifically, the aim of the workshop is to facilitate interaction as a crucible for consortium building in advance of Horizon 2020 (call 1.A.1.1 from the 2014-15 draft work programme.).

Organisers: Dr. Hamid Bouchachia(DEC) , Dr. Damien Fay (DEC)

ENABLE: Reflections on a Fieldtrip

BU research, Fusion, Women's Academic Network

A room with a view

We arrived fairly late in the evening. The roads were dark and seemed more windy and enclosed than during the daytime, and yet the bus driver, somewhat perversely, insisted on overtaking at speed on occluded bends whenever he possibly could!

The barrier to the ‘resort’ was shut when we arrived but our interpreter told the guard that we were indeed going to the Tasik Chini Resort – the only place one can go after passing through the gate. After deliberation, he let us proceed.

The receptionist indicated that tonight we had two rooms rather than the one room we had booked, having asked for two extra beds in the room for the children. One room had a twin bed and a mattress, and the other a single bed, but she said she would sort it all tomorrow. We paid in full after debating three or four times what the actual price was for the stay; a kind of mental gymnastics that pulls the mathematical body into contorted shapes only vaguely resembling the original anatomy from whence it came.

The rooms: interesting that the room with the twin beds and a ‘mattress’ was exactly that; no sheets or blankets just the mattress. The other room, however, looked more promising at first sight. There were in fact two beds there not one. OK, so the toilet ballcock was gone and water was constantly overflowing from the cistern onto the bathroom floor, but TWO beds!

So, we divided the children, given they didn’t want to sleep without an adult, sprayed the rooms with insecticide and prepared for the night. It was then that I (Jonathan) looked at the two beds and saw that whilst one was fine, the second was covered by dead, dying and some struggling ants and assorted insects; and the toilet was still dripping, resonant off the hollow dampness of Derbyshire’s Blue John mines! That bed couldn’t be slept in as I then preceded to spray it.

So, back to plan A with me (Sara) and one of the girls in the bed and one on the mattress. But, just a minute, there’s a mattress but no covers or pillow. No that’s not going to work so three in a bed it is, with some topping and tailing, and me back to the bed in the other room keeping the insects at bay and drowning the noise of the leaking cistern by air conditioning that’s making everything too cold and dry.

Fieldwork is, of course, meant to be a little uncomfortable and sometimes evocative of van Gennep’s ‘rite of passage’, a gaining of one’s socio-anthropological spurs! However, we are staying at what purports to be the premier resort for Tasik Chini. This is important because, until 2004 – (and here I (Jonathan) had to stop writing for a while to scratch that itch that turned out to be a troop of ants seeking solace in my bed) – in 2004 eco- and ethno-tourism (although somewhat contested) was seen as an important means of securing the economy of the area. It seems now, a decade on, that this resort finds anyone staying a rather irritating yet bizarre intrusion into a life that happily runs purposelessly for itself, except for weekend weddings, or as a place for the army cadets to stay and practice manoeuvres through the night. (Manoeuvres punctuated by eerie whistles, commands and shouts!) And, rather perversely, it seems that staff cannot get a single order right, no matter how small or precisely articulated it is: kopi ice O kosong (black iced coffee, without sugar) usually has milk and sugar in it; roti bakar (toast), if it comes at all, takes longer (much longer) than nasi goreng (fried rice)!

It also seems to evoke, more seriously, something that mimics the tragedy happening to the lake in bio-environmental terms and, from a human perspective, to the Orang Asli people living around the lake. It is an intrusion into the ill-thought plans of others or an encumbrance to manage that imposes rather than seeks dialogue!

And still the dripping cistern spits! (Should have consulted ‘Tripadvisor’ first http://www.tripadvisor.com.my/Hotel_Review-g298291-d2213723-Reviews-Lake_Chini_Resort-Pahang.html!)

Jonathan Parker & Sara Ashencaen Crabtree

Funding Success Stories: Sport Academic Group Strengthens Dutch-German-British Collaboration

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, EU, Funding opportunities, Fusion, PG research, Publishing

Dr Tim Breitbarth (Sport Academic Group) has been successful with his recent bid for Fusion/EU funding for teaching exchange visits to partner institutions in Groningen, The Netherlands, and Cologne.

At German Sport University Cologne Tim – who is also Programme Leader MSc Sport Management and Coordinator Internationalisation Sport at BU – will teach at their high-profile Masters in Sport Management over four days. The Masters attracts about 200 applications per year from within and outside Germany, but only 30 students are allowed into the course. The visit to Sport’s Erasmus partner institution Hanzehogeschool Groningen will include tutoring of international groups of students who participate in a multi-day management game.

Besides teaching commitments, the trips will help to move along joint research and publication projects with his European colleagues, such as editing the Special Issue on sport and social responsibility of Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society. In addition, they have been cooperating on conference and workshop organization and will once again co-lead a track at this year’s European Association for Sport Management conference.

Also, Tim and his BU colleagues were successful in securing internal funding for the first time in order to take the Sport Management and Sport Management Golf final year cohorts to a four-day intense international student management game in Cologne in late March, which he co-organises.

Hence, collaboration with, arguably, the world’s largest and renown sport university, has been in full swing with also two BU students on study exchange in Germany in semester 2 and PhD student Emma Mosley receiving training at their specialised Institute for Sport Psychology thanks to a Santander award.

Enhancing research collaborations and PhD student training with Zhejiang University

BU research, Fusion

Supported by the University’s Fusion Investment Fund, Dr . Lihua You will pay a visit to the State Key Lab of CAD & CG, Zhejiang University, China.

Zhejiang University is the second largest university in China. It has become China no. 1 university in Chinese university ranking 2011 (http://edu.qq.com/a/20110505/000133.htm), 2012 (http://edu.qq.com/zt2011/2012dxph/), and 2013 (http://edu.sina.com.cn/gaokao/2012utop/).  The State Key Lab of CAD & CG at Zhejiang University is a world-leading research organization and most prestigious and largest research community in computer aided design and computer graphics in China. It is a unique state laboratory in the field established by Ministry of Science and Technology of China in 1989.  Prof. Jin is a leading researcher in the Lab. He has secured over 40 projects funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China etc. including 31 projects with him as a PI, co-authored three books, and published more than 160 papers including over 60 high quality papers in international journals such as ACM Transactions on Graphics (SIGGRAPH) and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Prof. Jin has previously collaborated with Prof. Jian J. Zhang and Dr. You. They have already completed a project jointly funded by the Royal Society and National Natural Science Foundation of China. Through completing the project, they have co-authored over 10 papers including some papers published in leading international journals.

The University’s Fusion Investment Fund will enable Dr You’s to visit Prof. Jin late 2014 and have half a month to work with Prof Jin on some funding application proposal, develop new partners for funding bids, identify various funding opportunities and new research topics, plan joint research activities, and discuss co-supervision of their PhD students.

 

Tourism, Alcohol and Public Health – tensions and opportunities

BU research, Fusion

Philip Long and Andy Adams of the School of Tourism are collaborating with Ann Hemingway and Will Haydock of the School of Health and Social Care in a Fusion CCP project that aims to explore issues associated with alcohol consumption, public health and tourism. The project will examine the views of producers and distributors of alcohol products in Bournemouth, Dorset and the New Forest on visitor markets and their regulation. The research team will also explore public health, tourism, planning and local political perspectives on the relationships between policy and practice concerning alcohol and tourism (the visitor and ‘night-time’ economy) in the region.

This project will address research, policy and media discourses on public health concerns about excessive consumption of alcohol among visitors to coastal resorts such as Bournemouth. Although much of this focuses on public order issues relating to young drinkers, captured in the phrase ‘binge’ drinking, there is increasing anxiety surrounding older drinkers.  Nationally, 2012 saw the publication of The Government’s Alcohol Strategy, which noted the importance of ‘chronic diseases’ related to alcohol amongst those aged 25 and over, and promised a review of consumption guidelines that would include specific work on those aged over 65. 

Alongside this there is a research, policy and media focus on more positive connotations of alcohol, such as real ale, rural and urban ‘gastro pubs’, micro-breweries and festivals that are packaged and promoted as tourist attractions in areas such as the New Forest and Dorset. The importance of the real ale industry in the revitalisation of tradition and social, cultural and regional identities is increasingly acknowledged. In addition, given that social capital is understood to affect people’s long-term health, it may be that the social networks involved in real ale appreciation and tourism actually help to foster psychological health and wellbeing.

The key objective of the project is to establish how researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and the wider community can contribute to reconciling these apparently conflicting perspectives.

The research team is developing a mixed-method approach focusing on the consumption, production and distribution and, regulation dimensions of the relationships between alcohol, public health and tourism. We are now working to identify and secure participants in the research and would welcome comments and suggestions from colleagues across the University.