Engineering Design work typically consists of reusing, configuring, and assembling of existing components, solutions and knowledge. It has been suggested that more than 75% of design activity comprises reuse of previously existing knowledge. However in spite of the importance of design reuse activities researchers have estimated that 69% of companies have no systematic approaches to preventing the "reinvention of the wheel". The major issue for supporting design re-use is providing solutions that partially re-use previous designs to satisfy new requirements. Although 3D Search technologies that aim to create "a Google for 3D shapes" have been increasing in capability and speed for over a decade they have not found widespread application and have been referred to as "a solution looking for a problem"! This project is motivated by the belief that, with a new type of user interface, 3D search could be the solutions to the design reuse problem. The novel user interface proposed can be best understood in term of an analogy to the text message systems of mobile phones. On mobile phones 'Predictive text' systems complete words or phrases by matching fragments against dictionaries or phrases used in previous messages. Similarly a 'predictive CAD' system would complete 3D models using 'shape search' technology to interactively match partial CAD features against component databases. In this way the system would prompt the users with fragments of 3D components that complete, or extend, geometry added by the user. Such a system could potential increase design productivity by making the reuse of established designs an efficient part of engineering design. Although feature based retrieval of components from databases of 3D components has been demonstrated by many researchers so far the systems reported have been relatively slow and unable to be components of an interactive design system. However recent breakthroughs in sub-graph matching algorithms have enabled the emergence of a new generation of shape retrieval algorithms, which coupled with multi-core hardware, are now fast enough to support interactive, predictive design interfaces. This proposal aims to investigate the hypothesis that a "Predictive CAD" system would allow engineers to more effectively design new components that incorporate established, or standard, functional or manufacturing geometries. This would find commercial applications within large or distributed engineering organizations. This project can be regarded as an example of "big data" being employed to increase design productivity because even small engineering companies will have many hundreds of megabytes of CAD data that a "Predictive CAD" system would effectively pattern match against.

Engineering Design work typically consists of reusing, configuring, and assembling of existing components, solutions and knowledge. It has been suggested that more than 75% of design activity comprises reuse of previously existing knowledge. However in spite of the importance of design reuse activities researchers have estimated that 69% of companies have no systematic approaches to preventing the "reinvention of the wheel". The major issue for supporting design re-use is providing solutions that partially re-use previous designs to satisfy new requirements. Although 3D Search technologies that aim to create "a Google for 3D shapes" have been increasing in capability and speed for over a decade they have not found widespread application and have been referred to as "a solution looking for a problem"! This project is motivated by the belief that, with a new type of user interface, 3D search could be the solutions to the design reuse problem. The system this research is aiming to produce is analogous to the text message systems of mobile phones. On mobile phones 'Predictive text' systems complete words or phrases by matching fragments against dictionaries or phrases used in previous messages. Similarly a 'predictive CAD' system would complete 3D models using 'shape search' technology to interactively match partial CAD features against component databases. In this way the system would prompt the users with fragments of 3D components that complete, or extend, geometry added by the user. Such a system could potential increase design productivity by making the reuse of established designs an efficient part of engineering design. Although feature based retrieval of components from databases of 3D components has been demonstrated by many researchers so far the systems reported have been relatively slow and unable to be components of an interactive design system. However recent breakthroughs in sub-graph matching algorithms have enabled the emergence of a new generation of shape retrieval algorithms, which coupled with multi-core hardware, are now fast enough to support interactive, predictive design interfaces. This proposal aims to investigate the hypothesis that a "Predictive CAD" system would allow engineers to more effectively design new components that incorporate established, or standard, functional or manufacturing geometries. This would find commercial applications within large or distributed engineering organizations. This project is an example of how data mining could potentially be employed to increase design productivity because even small engineering companies will have many hundreds of megabytes of CAD data that a "Predictive CAD" system would effectively pattern match against.

The sustainability of rubber products is a major global challenge mainly due to the huge amount of rubber waste generated each year. Furthermore, many elastomer products including most car tyres are manufactured from fossil fuel-based materials, which are not renewable. This proposed research programme aims to tackle these challenges by manufacturing novel circular economy elastomer products from renewable biobased feedstocks, with zero waste, high resource efficiency and no reliance on fossil fuels, thus transforming the elastomer field. Two types of elastomer products will be manufactured for various applications, namely self-healing natural rubber products which can self-repair repeatedly after damage, and be reused, reprocessed and recycled after their end of life; and biobased thermoplastic elastomer products which can be reprocessed and recycled due to their thermoplastic nature. The new elastomers will be prepared and characterised, followed by the process optimisation, manufacture and evaluation of representative elastomer products using the optimal elastomers and elastomer composites as well as manufacturing processes. Subsequently, the self-repair, reuse, reprocessing and recycling behaviour of the new elastomer products will be assessed. Finally, the energy consumption and carbon emissions of the product lifecycle, product costs and the impact of the new products on the whole supply chain will be assessed. An interdisciplinary team of rubber and polymer scientists and manufacturing engineers, as well as a management scientist, will work on the programme together employing a holistic approach ranging from material design and synthesis, through to product manufacturing and finally self-repair, reuse and recycling. At the end of the programme, innovative biobased circular economy elastomer products will have been sustainably manufactured with their fundamental science and broader impact understood. The sustainable materials, manufacturing technologies, and the scientific understanding obtained from this research can be extended to other elastomer products in the future, ensuring the long-lasting sustainability of elastomer products and industry.

The Geo-coat project has been specified as necessary by our geothermal power and equipment manufacturing members, who, in order to reliably provide energy, need to improve plant capability to withstand corrosion, erosion and scaling from geofluids, to maintain the equipment up-time and generation efficiency. Additionally they need to be able to produce better geothermal power plant equipment protection design concepts through virtual prototyping to meet the increasing requirements for life cycle costs, environmental impacts and end-of-life considerations. Current materials, transferred from oil and gas applications to these exceptionally harsh environments, (and the corresponding design models) are not capable of performing, leading to constant need to inspect and repair damage. The Geo-coat project will develop new resistant materials in the form of high performance coatings of novel targeted "High Entropy Alloys" and Cermets, thermally applied to the key specified vulnerable process stages (components in turbines, valves, pumps, heat exchangers and pipe bends) in response to the specific corrosion and erosion forces we find at each point. We will also capture the underlying principles of the material resistance, to proactively design the equipment for performance while minimising overall capex costs from these expensive materials. The Geo-coat consortium has user members from geothermal plant operations and equipment manufacture to ensure the project's focus on real-world issues, coupled with world-leading experience in the development of materials, protective coatings and their application to harsh environments. In addition to developing the new coating materials and techniques, we also aim to transfer our experiences from the development of Flow Assurance schemes for Oil&Gas and Chemical industries to provide a new overarching set of design paradigms and generate an underpinning Knowledge Based System.

Geological engineering encompasses a range of applications from resource extraction (hydrocarbons, geothermal heat and power, water) to waste disposal (Carbon capture and storage, wastewater disposal) and energy storage (compressed air, hydrogen). All of these technologies rely on pumps to move fluid into or out of boreholes. This prosperity partnership brings together teams that have previously worked on pumps for well stimulation with new team members involved in geomechanics and monitoring systems. Our previous work has shown that the pumps used in well stimulation are often used in very simple ways to deliver a known pressure to the top of the wellbore, leading to inefficient processes that produce a lot of noise and waste. Our partnership aims to re-engineer such systems through three linked research themes. Firstly there is evidence that pulses in pressure or dynamic variations in mean pressure could be more effective in achieving the aims of geological engineering processes. To understand the potential of pulsed pumping we need a deeper understanding of the material response to dynamic variation of the system that is being pumped: the rock mass and the borehole (casing and cement). Secondly we need to understand how to control delivery of precise pressure variations into the borehole and how to monitor these as they travel down the bore and into the rock mass. This includes the need to monitor rock mass response to develop fully 'closed loop' control systems. Finally we want to integrate the systems understanding of the pumps, the pumped system and the control systems. We will trial our new pulse propagation and monitoring system in the UK (at a site where well stimulation will not take place) and test the new monitoring system at an active well stimulation site in N. America. A series of eight linked PhD projects will explore aspects of the problems, and investigate the application of smart pumping to other sectors such as water distribution systems or transport of mining slurry. Our overall goal is to reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of geological engineering through smart pumping, thereby reducing the environmental and social impact of such technologies. We have brought together a partnership of two industry and two university partners. The Weir Group and University of Strathclyde have a long history of collaboration on well stimulation pumps and other applications. The University of Edinburgh bring unique, world-leading geomechanical experimental capability to the partnership, and have previously collaborated with Strathclyde on carbon storage and compressed air energy storage. Silixa are young company specialising in optical fibres for sensing. Together this partnership will conduct the research that will underpin the development of smarter technologies in pumping and geological engineering.