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WINSPEC will study the feasibility and specification of a marine operated, low frequency modulated ultrasonic 'pulse-echo' method for monitoring the structure and condition of the layered foundations of offshore wind turbines. Numerical modelling and some laboratory testing will be undertaken to evaluate the sensitivity and characteristics of the spectral response to differing layered model representations of the foundation structure with various condition 'defects' built in. This work will provide experimental and modeled analyses to support a feasibility assessment of the 'pulse-echo' approach, where possible, identifying characteristic acoustic patterns (or signatures) that relate to varying the material properties of the layers and structure of the layered sequence, such as thickness and density and the introduction of inter-layer water. This work will be supported by E.ON Technologies (Ratcliffe) Ltd. who are responsible the maintenance of many of the UK's offshore wind farms such as Robin Rigg in the Solway Firth. These wind farms are national assets; for example Robin Rigg provides 180 MW of power to the National Grid (enough energy for over 100, 000 households). This method could form the basis for a safe, low power technology for deployment on underwater unmanned vehicles for inspecting the inner structure and condition of offshore wind turbine foundations. In so doing, WINSPEC would stimulate a shift towards improved asset inspection technologies supporting preventative interventions maintaining wind farm operation at higher generating capacities.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

1st year is the PG Diploma and research and Industry preparation Years 2-4 are a PhD at one of the CDT universities

Heptron design novel energy generation methods, and are developing a series of wind turbines integrated into other useful structures. We are using the grant to investigate user requirements, manufacture capabilities and IP issues.

There is a compelling need for well-trained future UK leaders in, the rapidly growing, Offshore Wind (OSW) Energy sector, whose skills extend across boundaries of engineering and environmental sciences. The Aura CDT proposed here unites world-leading expertise and facilities in offshore wind (OSW) engineering and the environment via academic partnerships and links to industry knowledge of key real-world challenges. The CDT will build a unique PhD cohort programme that forges interdisciplinary collaboration between key UK academic institutions, and the major global industry players and will deliver an integrated research programme, tailored to the industry need, that maximises industrial and academic impact across the OSW sector. The most significant OSW industry cluster operates along the coast of north-east England, centred on the Humber Estuary, where Aura is based. The Humber 'Energy Estuary' is located at the centre of ~90% of all UK OSW projects currently in development. Recent estimates suggest that to meet national energy targets, developers need >4,000 offshore wind turbines, worth £120 billion, within 100 km of the Humber. Location, combined with existing infrastructure, has led the OSW industry to invest in the Humber at a transformative scale. This includes: (1) £315M investment by Siemens and ABP in an OSW turbine blade manufacturing plant, and logistics hub, at Greenport Hull, creating over 1,000 direct jobs; (2) £40M in infrastructure in Grimsby, part of a £6BN ongoing investment in the Humber, supporting Orsted, Eon, Centrica, Siemens-Gamesa and MHI Vestas; (3) The £450M Able Marine Energy Park, a bespoke port facility focused on the operations and maintenance of OSW; and (4) Significant growth in local and regional supply chain companies. The Aura cluster (www.aurawindenergy.com) has the critical mass needed to deliver a multidisciplinary CDT on OSW research and innovation, and train future OSW sector leaders effectively. It is led by the University of Hull, in collaboration with the Universities of Durham, Newcastle and Sheffield. Aura has already forged major collaborations between academia and industry (e.g. Siemens-Gamesa Renewable Energy and Orsted). Core members also include the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (OREC) and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), who respectively are the UK government bodies that directly support innovation in the OSW sector and the development of novel marine environment technology and science. The Aura CDT will develop future leaders with urgently needed skills that span Engineering (EPSRC) and Environmental (NERC) Sciences, whose research plays a key role in solving major OSW challenges. Our vision is to ensure the UK capitalises on a world-leading position in offshore wind energy. The CDT will involve 5 annual cohorts of at least 14 students, supported by EPSRC/NERC and the Universities of Hull, Durham, Newcastle and Sheffield, and by industry. In Year 1, the CDT provides students, recruited from disparate backgrounds, with a consistent foundation of learning in OSW and the Environment, after which they will be awarded a University of Hull PG Diploma in Wind Energy. The Hull PG Diploma consists of 6 x 20 credit modules. In Year 1, Trimester 1, three core modules, adapted from current Hull MSc courses and supported by academics across the partner-institutes, will cover: i) an introduction to OSW, with industry guest lectures; ii) a core skills module, in data analysis and visualization; and iii) an industry-directed group research project that utilises resources and supervisors across the Aura partner institutes and industry partners. In Year 1, Trimester 2, Aura students will specialise further in OSW via 3 modules chosen from >24 relevant Hull MSc level courses. This first year at Hull will be followed in Years 2-4 by a PhD by research at one of the partner institutions, together with a range of continued cohort development and training.

There is increasing demand for renewable energy, as highlighted by the UK government's aim of reducing carbon emissions by 80% before 2050. Solar power is the most promising renewable technology due to the enormous amount of energy the sun can provide. Most commercially available solar panels - based on crystalline silicon - are relatively efficient but expensive to manufacture. Accordingly, there is significant interest in alternative photovoltaic absorbers that are just as efficient but have lower materials and processing costs. One route to finding novel solar absorbers is using quantum-mechanical computations. Indeed, many of the properties that determine photovoltaic performance - such as the strength of visible light absorption - can be calculated relatively easily. Many studies have taken advantage of this by searching for new solar absorbers based solely on electronic and optical properties. Unfortunately, this approach generally gives rise to many false positives where materials are predicted as efficient but perform poorly in practice. These shortcomings often result when the behaviour of crystal imperfections is not considered. These imperfections, called point-defects, play a crucial role in photovoltaic devices by limiting the maximum obtainable voltage and current. However, predicting the effects of defects on photovoltaic performance has so far proved tricky and has only been achieved for a select few systems. By gaining an understanding of the fundamental factors that control defect formation we can design new materials that are resistant to their effects. Materials in which defects do not significantly affect photovoltaic performance are called "defect tolerant". Due to the difficulty of calculating the impact of defects, the structural and chemical properties that give rise to defect tolerance are not well understood. However, recent advances in computational workflow software means it is now possible to automate the calculation of complex properties. This project will develop an automatic computational workflow to determine whether a material is defect tolerant. By applying the workflow to many hundreds of materials and analysing the trends, we can extract the structure-property relationships that give rise to defect tolerance. We can also use this information to develop machine learning models for predicting the impact of defects without needing to perform any calculations. As many other applications also rely on the formation of point-defects - such as thermoelectrics and quantum computers - our calculated data will be of broad interest to the scientific community. We will therefore make the results available as an online database of computed defect properties. An advanced understanding of the factors that govern defect tolerance will enable the rational design of the next generation of photovoltaic materials. Photovoltaics with reduced cost will facilitate the adoption of solar power and pave the way for a revolution in clean energy.

The UK presently has the largest installed capacity of offshore wind, accounting for 36% of global capacity in 2017. The offshore wind industry contributed 9.8% of the UK's power in the 3rd quarter of 2019. In the 2019 Offshore Wind Sector Deal, the sector committed to building up to 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030, with an ambition of increasing exports fivefold to £2.6bn. The Committee on Climate Change has recommended an installed capacity of 75 GW by 2050. Nearly all offshore wind turbines installed to date have been mounted on fixed bottom support structures located in water depths up to 60 m. Given the limited availability of suitable sites at such water depths, Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWT) will become increasingly important over the next decade to achieve the Offshore Wind Sector Deal goals and to help achieve the UK target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Sector Deal highlights the need for government to develop frameworks to support the advancement of technologies such as FOWT. Physical modelling is a critical tool for the development of a floating offshore wind turbine and is recommended in most development guidelines. This is especially true at early stages of the development of new concept with a technology readiness level (TRL) between 1 and 3. Testing model devices at scale in the controlled environment of a laboratory has many advantages. These include the proof (or otherwise) of novel design concepts, the ability to test in systematically changing conditions and the ability to test in conditions which have low occurrence probabilities (i.e. extreme events). Quantitative measurements of motions and loads on scaled FOWT models can be made with much greater ease and accuracy then at full scale at sea. Qualitative observations are far easier to observe as well. If done correctly these measurements and observations can lead to the evolution of device designs and concepts and reduce the chance of costly failure; if and when devices are eventually deployed at sea. The University of Plymouth COAST laboratory (www.plymouth.ac.uk/coast-laboratory) is a state-of-the-art research facility for the study of wave and current interaction with offshore and coastal structures using scaled physical modelling. It houses the Ocean Basin, a 35 m x 15.5 m tank with a raisable floor that can enable testing at water depths between 0.5 and 3 m. This project will establish the UKFOWTT - UK Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Test facility within the Ocean Basin. In addition to the wave and current generation that COAST can presently deliver, UKFOWTT will add wind generation to COAST. This will consist of a bank of axial fans, mounted on a gantry spanning the tank width and have the ability to generate winds up to 10 m/s, model gusting and have a controllable wind profile. The generator will be moveable vertically from just at the water's surface to approximately 1 m above. It will be rotatable +/- 30 degrees relative to the basin, enabling the influence of wave/current/wind/model alignment to be investigated. The primary purpose of UKFOWTT is to enable both fundamental and applied research in topics related to Floating Offshore Wind. This will be a unique facility within the UK, enabling systematic physical modelling experiments with wind, wave and currents simultaneously. Data collected from physical modelling can improve understanding of the underlying physics, support development of analytical theories and validate advanced numerical models. It is also a low risk method of testing new and novel concepts. UKFOWTT provides the associated instrumentation to support these studies. UKFOWTT will also support research in other sectors of Ocean and Coastal Engineering disciplines, including the Oil and Gas sector, floating wave, tidal and solar energy, autonomous vessels, launch and recovery operations and coastal defenses.

This research will focus on decreasing the cost of production and enhancing the lifetime of Organic Solar Cells (OSCs) by blending the active layer components with commodity polymers. OSCs have, in recent years, been given a lot of attention due to their rapidly increasing power conversion efficiencies of up to 17%. However, little attention has been paid to their lifetime and cost of production. In order to meet increasing global energy demand in a sustainable manner the renewable technologies employed must have reasonably long lifetimes and low cost of production so they can compete with fossil fuels. OSCs tend to have a lifetime in the order of days to months in ambient conditions; this is due to degradation by photooxidation in the presence of water and oxygen. This degradation is therefore a roadblock to their uptake. Self-encapsulation by the addition of commodity polymers may decrease the penetration of water vapour and oxygen preventing degradation and enhancing their lifetime. Commodity polymers are insulating, inexpensive, readily available and some are even hygroscopic, meaning they can take on water. Integration of these molecules into the active layer can be easily achieved and could have positive effects. Although, the choice of the polymer is crucial as it can affect the morphology of the active layer and therefore can affect the inner workings of the cell. Therefore, more research is needed in order to identify suitable commodity polymers for specific donor acceptor systems.

The project is involved in the development of a specialised sensor for wind turbine applications. The development of this sensor will allow for improved monitoring of the turbine, leading to a reduction in O&M costs.

Reports concerning dwindling reserves of fossil fuels and concerns over fuel security are frequent news headlines. The rising costs of fuel are a daily reminder of the challenges faced by a global society with ever increasing energy demands. In this context it is perhaps surprising that so many of the renewable energy supplies available to us, namely, sunlight, winds and waves, remain largely untapped resources. This is mainly due to the challenges that exist in converting these energy forms into fuels from which energy can be released 'on demand' when we wish to play computer games, drive a car and so on. However, during plant photosynthesis fuels are made naturally from the energy in sunlight. Light absorption by the green chlorophyll pigments generates an energised electron that is directed, along chains of metal centres, to catalysts that make sugars. These sugars fuel us, and all animals, when their energy is released following digestion of a meal. However, using farmed plants to produce biofuels is controversial as agriculture is also required to feed the world. As a consequence, and inspired by natural processes, we propose to build a system for artificial photosynthesis. In essence, we wish to place tiny solar-panels on microbes in order to harness sunlight to drive the production of hydrogen - a fuel from which the technologies to release energy on demand are well-advanced. We will use dyes and semi-conductor particles as mechanically and chemically robust materials to capture the energy in sunlight and generate energised electrons. We will couple these particles to biology's version of conducting wires. These wires are made from heme proteins that span membranes that provide Nature's solution to compartmentalising water-filled chambers (i.e., the inside of the bacterium). The heme-wires are produced naturally by 'rock-breathing' microorganisms and after these wires have transferred the energised electrons across the membrane they will drive enzyme catalysis to produce hydrogen Our novel bio-mimetic photocatalysts will establish new principles for the design of homogeneous photocatalysts with spatially segregated sites for fuel-evolution and the supply of electrons that is needed to sustain this process. We imagine that our photocatalysts will proove versatile and that with slight modification they will be able to harness solar energy for the manufacture of drugs and fine chemicals.