I seem to have a student at every stage of a PhD at the moment! This month has seen one student submit a thesis, a second reach the pinnacle “light bulb” moment where the whole story of the thesis became apparent (to me at least), a third sitting his viva this week, a fourth well on the way to assembling a machine and a potential fifth having been awarded funding to enable starting late 2019. At one point I had 8 concurrent PhD students, so I can take all these developments in my stride.
A new journal publication about the effects of coil pressing got accepted for publication this month –” Life-time Characteristics of Random Wound Compressed Stator Windings under Thermal Stress” in IET Electric Power Applications. First time in an IET journal for me. Hopefully it will get picked up by the research community, as it is packed full of experimental reliability results and makes some interesting points about the practicalities of coil pressing.
I am looking to expand my research base into carbon life cycles, end of life disposal of motors and bio-engineering. This means a heavy focus on proposal writing over the coming months.
Two machines are slowly making their way from the computer screens into the laboratory for testing. We are doing some work on the practicalities of using slot wedges, and also winding tape rather than round wire. Quite possibly my favourite part of the job: do these machines actually work in practice. Both of these will be tested towards the end of the summer I hope.
I haven’t done much STEM activity this month, apart from partaking in a campus wide science week activity. Hoping to get more done later this term, before schools break up for the summer
