EPSRC SIMULIFE

Professor Lenny Koh, Director of the Advanced Resource Efficiency Centre (AREC), School of Management, is a co-investigator in the £1.1 million Cradle-to-Grave Life Cycle Prediction of Automotive Materials and Systems in Service: Impact of Ageing on Performance (SIMULIFE) project.

The study aims to address issues surrounding the ageing of materials and associated consequences and is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). The project consists of three main steps.

First, it hopes to identify the age parameter that represents, on a macroscopic scale, the micro and sub-microscopic features, underlying processes such as nucleation and growth of micro defects, and/or physicochemical transformations.

Second, the project will formulate a constitutive equation that can mathematically represent ageing. Third, through experimental examination, the study will help identify conditions that lead to catastrophes such as small perturbations in controlling parameters which lead to large variations of the age parameter.

Results obtained through each of these steps will facilitate an understanding of the aging process and will help improve Jaguar and Land Rover’s performance which will contribute to increasing customer satisfaction.

The project is undertaken in collaboration with Professor Constantinos Soutis, University of Manchester, who acts as the Principal Investigator.

Staff involved

 Other project members

• Co-investigator Philip Withers, University of Manchester
• Saravanan Rajendran
• Ying Wang
• Jasmin Stein
• Neil Hopkinson, Director of 3D Printing at Xaar