Chris leads a wide portfolio of propulsion systems research into topics including hybrid Diesel and SI engine systems, electrification, advanced transmission systems and driving behaviour. The research has two main themes. First - new technologies that can deliver more sustainable propulsion systems. Secondly - the design of new techniques to support the automotive sector progression towards a more virtual product development process. These strands come together through the development of novel and intensive measurement and simulation techniques for multi physics processes, leading to greater insight into system behaviour under dynamic operating conditions.
All of Chris’s research is in collaboration with industry, most notably Ford Motor Company and Jaguar LandRover. Chris has published over 120 conference and journal papers with over 50 industrial co-authors and attracted over £20 million for collaborative research funded by EPSRC, DTi, TSB/Innovate UK, APC and directly from industry
Leading the AAPS CDT is a really exciting and rewarding activity for me.
I have always enjoyed supervising PhD students as they conduct interesting research, but it was clear to me that many of them could have benefitted greatly from the training opportunities I had as a young engineer. I was a thin-sandwich student, sponsored by Massey Ferguson. I spent half of each year in industry, the rest at University. On graduation I spent two years as a design engineer at Massey Ferguson. Over this entire period I learnt a huge amount about the scientific basis of engineering, how an engineering company works, how design and development is conducted and how to innovate. These early experiences set me up really well to conduct a PhD when I returned to the University and have been the foundation of my career as an academic.
I wanted the CDT to offer a similar richness and diversity of experience to our cohort to allow our students to do great research but more importantly to gain the training and skills they need to have a successful career in the mobility sector. I believe that our unique combination of postgraduate academic research as part of a broad cohort, blended with training and industrial collaboration is the modern equivalent of the training experience I benefitted from. The CDT will develop a group of highly skilled and versatile professionals that will lead out sector through the most challenge period in its history – the transition to clean, sustainable and affordable mobility.
My research philosophy is to understand the fundamentals of complex sub-system interactions that determine the operation and performance of internal combustion engines and automotive powertrains. In doing so I am able to make significant contributions towards their improvement, especially in the areas of turbocharging, dynamic optimisation and control and system integration. This is achieved through detailed experimental investigations coupled with modelling, simulation and analytical studies. In this way I can apply fundamental science within a systems environment to analyse these numerous complex systems and their interactions. My research is aimed at reducing the environmental signature of automotive powertrains, where significant impact can be demonstrated.
My research is focussed on powertrain systems, encompassing dynamic optimisation and control and system integration. The underlying scientific contribution is an improvement in the understanding of complex system behaviour through new experimental techniques in combination with numerical simulation.
Technological applications of this approach include Diesel engines, spark ignition engines, turbocharging, transmission systems, human behaviour, electrical machines and hybrid powertrains.
Powertrain systems will remain central to our transport needs for decades to and must evolve quickly to meet our environmental aspirations. This becomes increasingly challenging as the systems grow more complex in order to approach the limits on system efficiency imposed by physics. Despite these challenges, the products developed by industry must be affordable if they are to be adopted in volumes sufficient to have a real impact on overall energy usage levels. This poses significant constraints on the technology, which from a research perspective is highly challenging. My research meets an essential need in allowing industry to have a full understanding of the fundamental scientific underpinnings of the system in order to make the required improvements. Critical to this understanding is the study of how these complex powertrain systems react in the face of wide ranging and chaotic stimuli from the driver, environment and external traffic conditions. This is a multidisciplinary field combining fundamental science with human factors and technological challenges. As such, my research can be characterised as:
I really enjoy opportunities to work with industry and to generate real world impact from my research. Of course, working with household names such as Ford, Jaguar Land Rover and McLaren is really exciting, but I also enjoy the opportunities to help much smaller companies. There are many examples of this that I have been fortunate to be involved with, but one that comes to mind is a series of projects with Ashwoods Automotive which spanned a range of products from cost effective electric machines through to a driver feedback device that cuts fuel consumption and emissions in real world driving. Working with the people at Ashwoods as the company grew and evolved has been really rewarding.
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