February 2005
News

Putting on the Brakes

Engineering, Design and Technology has been speeding into action with the annual Braking of Road Vehicles course and a Crash Safety seminar series for local A-level students.

The 38th Braking of Road Vehicles course was held at the University, attended by 45 delegates from 12 different countries.

Speakers from industry and academia presented to the delegates, and the course included up-to-date coverage of road vehicle brakes and braking systems, with particular emphasis on electronic braking systems.

Left to right: Dean of EDT Professor Andrew Day, Senior Design/Development Egineer Tom England, speaker Paul Thomas from Arvin Meritor, and delegate Friederike Halstrick.

The event also included the Seventh Peter Newcomb Memorial Lecture, "Optimising Energy Flows in Regenerative Braking" by University research student Philipp Meise.

The Memorial Lecture was attended by Dr Bob Spurr, colleague of, and co-author of many books with, Peter Newcomb. Bob is still actively involved in scientific research associated with friction and friction materials.

Tom England, who graduated from Bradford in 2002, with a BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering and Management, is now working as a Senior Design/Development Engineer with Arvin Meritor in South Wales.

He said: "I am working in commercial vehicle brake design and I was interested to see braking on a smaller scale; car brakes use a different technology to heavy braking systems."

This year four of the delegates were women. Friederike Halstrick, from Wiesbaden, Germany, said: "It has been a good experience coming here, and has given me a good overview of different aspects of brakes."

Meanwhile, Engineering, Design and Technology has also been hosting Crash Safety Days for sixth-formers from several schools in the region.

The events were organised by the School as part of the students' A-level Physics course, bringing a practical dimension to the physics of impact. More than 65 sixth-formers from Tapton School in Sheffield and North Halifax Grammar School learnt about how cars are designed to avoid a crash and to protect occupants in the event of a crash.

The crash performance of modern cars is measured by the consumer-driven European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), and Ford provided an example of a car which had been assessed in this way and demonstrated excellent protection for the occupants.

Professor Andrew Day, who ran the seminars, said that he hoped that this exciting aspect of Automotive Engineering would encourage students to consider an Engineering career and also make them better drivers!

14 February 2005

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