School of Engineering News

Congratulations to Navroop Matharu, Faisal Azhar and Richard Lillington on being three of the four runners-up in the 2012 Warwick Research Postgraduate Poster Competition. Along with the book token prize their posters are now entered into the Vitae Midlands Hub regional poster competition at the Herbert Gallery (Coventry) on 12 July 2012.

Navroop’s poster entitled ‘ABC of FRP: An Aspect of Bolted Connections in Fibre Reinforced Polymer Structures – Pin Bearing Strength’ presents test results from a study on the bearing strength of fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) material. The strength data for plane and threaded bolting is required to calibrate a specific strength formula for the design of bolted connections in safety critical FRP structures. Mr Matharu is supervised by Prof. Toby Mottram and his PhD research is funded by the EPSRC project Connections and Joints for Buildings and Bridges of Fibre Reinforced Polymer (H042628-1).

Faisal’s poster entitled “Video based Human Motion Analysis” presents a model based human significant body point labelling framework. The research is focused on developing a video based human motion analysis system for automatic human activity recognition based on human tracking and motion analysis. In the first phase of the project, human significant body points such as head (H), arms (A), feet (F) etc., are tracked by employing anthropometry, body models and human vision inspired criteria. Next motion trajectory of significant body points coupled with other techniques such as convex hull, optical flow, space time shape etc., are used to infer an activity. Faisal Azhar is supervised by Dr. Tardi Tjahjadi and his PhD research is funded by the Warwick Postgraduate Research Scholarship and School of Engineering Bursary.

Richard's poster gives a snap-shot of work done in researching advanced fuel system characterization techniques, for use in the automotive industry. The aim of the research is to enable industry to develop more accurate ways of calibrating and controlling fuel injection systems; so that fuel economy may be improved, and polluting emissions reduced. The research work being conducted is a combination of theoretical work, mathematical modelling, and experimental work. Richard is a part-time PhD student, conducting research in conjunction with his role in industry as a Systems Engineer working for Delphi Diesel Systems in Stroud. He is supervised by Professor Derek Chetwynd, and Dr Peter Jones, of the School of Engineering’s 'Systems, Measurement and Modelling Research group.'