£4m investment to make city "world leader" in structural dynamics

THE University of Sheffield has been awarded a £4m grant for a facility that can bolster the city’s reputation as a world leader in structural dynamics.

The investment, from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), was announced by the Business Secretary Sajid Javid during his trade mission to Malaysia and Singapore. It takes the total current investment in the facility to £11m.

“This £4m investment will provide a step change in structural dynamics research and position the UK as a world leader in this field,” said Prof Philip Nelson, chief executive of the EPSRC.

“By investing in this area of research and innovation at Sheffield, we are providing an internationally excellent platform supporting industry and business to help deliver a successful economy and future growth.”

The Structural Dynamics Laboratory for Verification and Validation will be built on the second phase of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Park and will enable the University of Sheffield to work with industry to test and research engineering structures and systems from the component level to full scale.

A modular environmental chamber in the laboratory will be able to control temperature, humidity and wind speed as well as simulate rain and snow. The ability to test in realistic conditions at full scale will pave the way for engineers to create lighter, greener, safer structures.

Prof Richard Jones, pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation at the University of Sheffield, said: “Computer simulation of models of the way large structures behave in use are increasingly powerful, but for industry to realise the full benefits of these techniques we need to test these models against large scale experimental data, so they can be confident of their results.

“This facility will allow us to do this testing, giving industry confidence in the models and allowing faster and therefore more cost effective product developments in a number of different industry sectors.

“Better modelling also means we will be able to move from structures that have a safe-life design philosophy to a damage-tolerant one which offers cost savings through extending the lifetime of existing structures.”