Professor Dan Cogswell

I am a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, researching how to standardise and take advantage of digital material property information in supporting better design, processing and materials selection for high integrity applications. Investigating how to apply a structural integrity mind-set (what will break next and how do we prevent it?) to the generation of materials data beyond the adoption of specified minimum properties in safety assessments.

I am leading research into several aspects of how to generate an assured prediction of mechanical performance. Finding the means to develop serial-number specific predictions of mechanical performance requires understanding of microstructure, processing history, measured mechanical performance through standardised testing, and the service environment of the component. Essentially, how do we capture and communicate the essential data we need to make predictions of performance rather than estimates based on judgement? It is a big problem so this involves support from researchers at the University of Sheffield (Prof Hector Basoalto), the University of Manchester (Dr Ed Pickering) and Imperial College London (Dr Catrin Davies).

I spent the first stage of my career focussed on improving and estimating the mechanical properties of steels used in nuclear steam raising plants. Acting as Internal Authority for Fracture Metallurgy and Materials Authority for Low Alloy Steels. I have worked closely with UK metal suppliers on linking-up research activities, supporting studentships and joint programmes in several UK universities. I am an active member of standards and technical committees.

Looking to add more weight to subjective judgements common in property estimation, I undertook a distance learning MSc in Statistics with the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Sheffield.