Facilities

Researchers in the group are all located in the Innovative Technology Research Centre (ITRC) Building within the School of Mechanical, Materials, Manufacturing and Management.  All researchers are equipped with high-end PCs connected to the University network, which provides excellent on-line access to a wide range of electronic journals and other research information.

The group also has multi-processor workstations and uses the University’s High Performance Computing (HPC) facility.  This is one of the fastest academic machine in the European Union and is capable of 3.14 terraflops. The facility consists of a main cluster of 1024 Opteron CPUs and is co-joined by a number of satellite clusters with identical chips, memory and operating system for the purposes of code development and testing.  The group makes extensive use of leading commercial software packages; CFX and Fluent for computational fluid dynamics modelling, ABAQUS for finite element modelling, DEFORM for process modelling and Unigraphics and Pro-E for design.

Experimental validation of analytical and numerical models is a vital part of the work.  The Group has an extensive range of test rigs featuring first class instrumentation and control systems.  These include a shaft test facility and gear and bearing rigs that reproduce the oil system conditions in future engine designs.  Rig design and testing is undertaken by a very experienced team of experimental officers and technicians who work in collaboration with the Group’s researchers.