Department's Research Rating Jumps by Two Grades.
The University of Plymouth's submission under UoA 30 (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering) has just been awarded a grade 4 under the government's recent Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).
The research group combines 7 staff from Composite Materials, Mathematics, Structural Integrity, Control Enginering and Manufacturing. In the period from January 1996 to December 2000, the group has won research funding of £2.8M, and published several high quality papers.
The main purpose of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) is to enable the higher education funding bodies to distribute public funds for research selectively on the basis of quality. Institutions conducting the best research receive a larger proportion of the available grant. The RAE assesses the quality of research in universities and colleges in the UK every four to five years. Around £5 billion of research funds will be distributed in response to the results of the 2001 RAE.
The RAE provides quality ratings for research across all disciplines. Panels use a standard scale to award a rating for each submission. Ratings range from 1 to 5*, according to how much of the work is judged to reach national or international levels of excellence.
Full results for all UK Higher Education Institutions can be found at www.rae.ac.uk
Please address any queries about current research projects (including requests for reprints) to John Summerscales.
Current Research Projects
New innovative products for the rail industry
(Teaching Company Programme).
Associate: Alan Sleith.
Academic supervisors: Dr John Summerscales, Prof Roland Burns.
Duration: 2001-2003. Funding TCD/Vortok.
Control System Development for Resin
Infusion (Teaching Company Programme).
Associate: Les Bond.
Academic supervisors: Dr Stephen Grove, Dr Robert Sutton.
Duration: 2000-2002. Funding TCD/Plastech.
Resin Infusion Techniques for Composite Aircraft
Parts (Teaching Company Programme).
Associates: Lara Attridge, Iosif Progoulakis and Robert Blackburn.
Academic supervisors: Dr John Summerscales, Dr Tim Searle, Dr Stephen Grove.
Duration: 2000-2003. Funding TCD/GKN Westland Aerospace.
Damage Tolerance Life Prediction in Composite
Structures.
Research student: Chris Leavy
Supervisors: Dr John Summerscales, Prof R Sutton.
Duration: 2001-2004. Funding: EPSRC.
Click here for Publications List
