Mirce Akademy

Henshall, John Leslie B.A.(Cantab) 1st Class Hons., Natural Sciences (Materials Science), 1976 M.A.(Cantab), 1976 Ph.D.(Cantab)

• 1979 Member Institution of Metallurgists (now Institute of Materials)
• 1979 Chartered Engineer
• 1985 Member Institute of Road Transport Engineers (now Society of Operations Engineers)
• 1998 Honorary Professor, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China
• 2003: Science Fellow of MIRCE Akademy, Exeter, UK

The aim of the major part of his research activities is to study the relationship between the processing, microstructure and mechanical behaviour of materials, particularly advanced ceramics, composites and metals. The modelling of the mechanical properties of materials and components is also being pursued actively at the present time using both finite element and analytical approaches as appropriate. The main other research areas have been concerned with the synthesis of new materials, including nanomaterials, ceramic coatings and high purity end-substituted alkanes and the investigation of their structures and properties. Brief outlines of some of the research activities are described below.

Structural ceramics and ultra hard materials have received a strong impetus over approximately the last 15 years. Since these materials are right at the forefront of high technology, the development of experimental apparatus to be able to measure their properties is exceedingly difficult. Recently, the development of a new contact fatigue test method has allowed the build up of deformation and fracture in ceramics subjected to repeated loading to be measured. The finite element analysis of rigid indentation and soft impresser testing, including time dependent, repeated loading and sliding has been used as a method to be able to determine the behaviour of these materials under point contact loading conditions, which are relevant to many current and potential applications of these materials.

The synthesis of advanced ceramic materials has concentrated on developing a novel ceramic coating method, manufacture of silicon nitride based ceramic nano/micro-filters and tough ceria stabilised tetragonal zirconias.

The machining of materials has been studied with respect to the use of ultrahard material tools, green compact machining of ceramics, and the role of lubricants in conventional metal cutting.

A completely different area of research has been concerned with investigating the causes of failure in commercial vehicle wheel fixing systems. This work has received national recognition through publication by the Institute of Road Transport Engineers and articles in the press, on radio and television.

Recently, the design and prototyping of a medical device has been undertaken.

In addition to these main research areas, technical consultancy, including expert witness appearances, has been undertaken in failure analysis in mechanical, electrical, medical and marine components, mechanical engineering design, and property testing and microstructural evaluation.
 

Dr Koldzic Milija    

Born: 1950, Priboj, Yugoslavia.

• 1974 Bachelor of Engineering Science
• 1990 Master of Science
• 1999 Doctor of Science

All degrees obtained from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Since its establishment in 1999 until his premature death in June 2006, Dr Koldzic has been very active and frequent visitor of the MIRCE Akademy. Extremely fruitful research collaboration has been established in the areas of reliability testing, which included  the planning of experiments, data collection, data analysis and estimation of the parameters of the life distributions of the mechanical components. The initial target for the application of the research performed was testing and design of the formula 1 racing cars, as apart of the research activities of the F1RE Centre of the MIRCE Akademy.

On 6 December 2006, Dr Koldzic was posthumously awarded the title of the Science Fellow of the Akademy in the recognition of his original contribution to the development of the

 "Method for the determination of the Weibull parameters for the life distribution of the components of the mechanical systems based on the accelerated multi-factorial experimental testing"

The Akademy shall continue researching and applying the Method proposed by Dr Koldzic through its Master and Doctoral Diploma Programmes in Mirce Mechanics, under the Scholarship scheme established in his memory.

Dr John Crocker,   BSc in Mathematics in 1971 from University of Sheffield, MSc in Logistics Engineering in 1997 from MIRCE Centre, University of Exeter, PhD in Logistics Engineering in 2001 from MIRCE Centre, University of Exeter.

• Chartered Engineer
• Fellow of the Operational Research Society
• Director of the Operational Research Society
• Ex District Director and Chapter Chairman Society of Logistics Engineers
• Member of Royal Aeronautical Society

His career has been spent in developing mathematical models of the operation of systems in real life scenarios in order to help improve the management of those systems. “Maintenance is the management of failures to achieve system functionability at an affordable cost”. The better one can predict system failures and their causes, hopefully, the better they can be managed. Failure phenomena have many causes ranging from the atomic level through human factors to external factors which can neither be controlled nor predicted (such as volcanic ash ingestion or bird strikes).

Dr Crocker's main areas of interest are in developing an understanding of how failure mechanisms and component design influence the time to failure distribution parameters and using this knowledge to improve maintenance and support policies with a view to minimising in-service costs. Stringent quality control throughout the manufacturing process should produce components which are as nearly identical as physics will allow. Those in the same engine are operated in almost identical conditions so one would expect their times-to-failure when caused by intrinsic mechanisms to have relatively low variance. In-service data rarely supports this hypothesis but this could be for many reasons; the question is if these contaminating factors could be eliminated would the variances be reduced to the expected levels. Resulting from this, the next question is how can these factors be eliminated or, at least, reduced. 

If the times-to-failure for any given mechanism exhibit low levels of variance then this should lead to better forecasts when maintenance will be required. This can then be used to better manage the maintenance facilities and to identify which components should be replaced prematurely to reduce the number of engine removals whilst holding down the costs of their recoveries. If this is done, the number of failures is likely to be reduced which will lead to there being less data upon which to base these policies. We can use simulation modelling to help identify and quantify the potential benefits and hence put a ceiling on how much should be spent on improving data capture and integrity. 

 Mr John Thompson 

• Chartered mathematician [2000]
• Fellow of the institute of Mathematics & it’s applications.
• Chartered scientist [2005].
• BA degree [O.U. maths & stats 1982].

 John started his career as a aircraft electrical apprentice for the UK MoD at Royal Aircraft Establishment Bedford. After this technical training he moved to civil airline engineering maintenance for  Monarch Engineering at Luton airport.  After a few years he moved to Hunting Engineering LTD ampthill beds. As a reliability engineer on free fall weapon systems. His next move was to British Aerospace at Hatfield as a reliability engineer on advanced air to air missiles.
 
He moved to Agusatawestlands in 1987 as a reliability engineer to work on the AW101 Merlin helicopter. During his time at agustawestlands john moved to the logistic modelling department. Where he developed a event simulation model . This model has three main elements of Repair Loop, Helicopter operations & Costs [repairs & spares]. And combines all three to produce cost of performance.

 Natalia Passynkova  

Born: 1969, Novosibirsk, Russia

• Medical Doctor, Novosibirsk State Medical Academy, 1994
• 1994 - current license for general medical practice.
• 1997  - current license for psychiatric practice.
• PhD, specialty: neurophysiology, psychiatry. State Research Institute of Physiology, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Novosibirsk, 1999, title of the dissertation: “Seasonal affective disorder: spatial organization of EEG power and coherence in the depressive state and in light-induced and summer remission”,

• 1997-1999: Scientific researcher-neurophysiologist, doctoral position.
• 1999-2002 post-doctoral position, both in State Research Institute of Physiology, Laboratory of cognitive physiology, Novosibirsk, Russia, . Medical-research work with patients suffered from mood disorder.
• Electroencephalographic (EEG) investigations. Teaching: EEG and emotional-cognitive domain.
• 2002–2006: post-doctoral position, auditory functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (IfN), Special Lab Non-Invasive Brain Imaging, Brenneckestr. 6, D – 39118, Magdeburg, Germany.
• Duties: fMRI and EEG Experiments. Teaching: EEG technology,
• April, 2006 - 2099  – Marie Curie Fellow, Transfer of Knowledge, Functional Brain, Imaging during adaptive behavioral control. University of Plymouth, Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, Plymouth, UK, Designing and conducting fMRI experiments, based on event related design including eye-tracking. Teaching: fMRI technology.

• Russian Physiological Society (1995-2002), member,
• Russian Neurophysiological Society (1999-2002), member,
• The Organization of Human Brain Mapping (2003-present), member.
• Soros Medical Seminar, 1999.