PhD student, 2016 intake

University: Imperial College London

Industrial partner: NDEvR

Background: Undergraduate Masters in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, graduated in June 2016.

Remnant life prediction of components experiencing fatigue damage is critical to the monitoring of structural integrity in numerous engineering applications. Initial trials with constant amplitude fatigue loadings have shown that monitoring the increasing crack growth rate, as opposed to crack length, can provide significant advantages in monitoring the state of damage and remnant life of engineering structures.

This project seeks to develop the use of rate monitoring for practical structural integrity assessments of fatigue damage with variable stress loading sequences, which is often the case for real-life engineering structures. Achieving this will require a combination of established understanding of fracture mechanics, review of real-life fatigue loading conditions, as well as current NDE capabilities together with a novel approach to rate of damage accumulation.