Analysis of the effects of high explosive blast loading on structures has applications in transport security, infrastructure assessment and defence protection. Engineers must utilise materials in efficient and effective ways to mitigate loads of extreme magnitudes, acting over milliseconds. But there is a fundamental problem which hampers research and practice in this field; we still do not fully understand the loads generated by a high explosive blast. Scientific characterisation of blast loading was a pressing issue in the middle of the last century, as researchers developed methods to predict the loading from large conventional blasts, and from atomic weapons at relatively long distances from targets. The huge amount of effort expended on this work, and the involvement of some of the world's leading physicists and mathematicians (G.I. Taylor, John von Neumann) reflected the existential nature of that threat. This work was predominately based on studying blast loading on targets at relatively long distances from detonations (far-field). Over the past few decades, whilst great advances have been made in understanding and designing materials to withstand extraordinary loads, experimental characterisation of blast loading itself has not kept pace in three key areas, which this project directly aims to address: Firstly, we don't know the magnitudes of explosive loading on targets very close to a high explosive detonation. Today's terrorist threats are frequently from smaller, focused, close-range explosions. Scenarios such as bombs smuggled onto aircraft, or targeted attacks on key items of critical infrastructure are ones in which such "near-field" loading is potentially devastating. But there is an almost total absence of high quality experimental work on characterising near-field blast loading. Predictions in these safety-critical areas currently rely on extrapolation of simple far-field models, or the use of inadequately validated numerical models. The project will provide new, properly validated, numerical models based on high quality experimental work to address this. This raises the second knowledge gap. Our current models of detonation-to-blast-wave mechanisms are based on simplified assumptions, such as that energy is released essentially instantaneously on detonation. Whilst this appears to work well for the far-field, there are major doubts over its validity in the near-field. This project will bring together blast engineers, high-temperature experimentalists, and energetic chemistry researchers to identify the role of early-stage post-detonation chemical reactions between the explosive fireball and the atmospheric oxygen in releasing energy, and how that affects the subsequent blast loading. The data gathered in the project will allow a new conceptual blast model to be created based on novel experimental analysis. The final knowledge gap is the question of whether blast loading in well-controlled scientific experiments is essentially deterministic or chaotic in nature. Addressing this issue is vital if the blast loading research community is to have the equivalent of a standard wind tunnel or shaking table test. Our preliminary work has led to the hypothesis that there is a region at the boundary between the near- and far-fields, where instabilities in the fireball will lead to large and random spatial and temporal variations in pressure loading, but that either side of this, the loading should be deterministic and determinable. The project will provide the data to validate this hypothesis, thus being able to provide guidance to other researchers in the field. Addressing these gaps, through a programme of multi-disciplinary experimental research, will produce a step change in our understanding of blast loading and our ability to protect against blast threats.

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.

We are proposing to develop and implement new software on HPC platforms which will enable new wide-ranging scientific applications in materials simulations using static lattice techniques. The project will initiate new developments in the GULP (General Utility Lattice Program) which over the last decade has become the standard code for lattice simulations, with a very substantial national and international user base of several thousand users. Current versions of the code are, however, limited to single processor or small cluster platforms, which prevents applications to the type of complex problems and systems which are addressed by materials chemistry and physics. The project will develop new software, which will be based on (i) an efficiently parallelised version of GULP; (ii) a new integrated version of GULP bringing together developments from different groups; and (iii) a new master code KLMC (Knowledge Led Master Controller) that is able to setup novel complex simulations, span multiple GULP jobs, and analyse results in order to achieve the following main application types:(a) mapping energy landscapes as a route to complex simulations of solid state reactions, enumeration and sampling of local configurations in disordered systems;(b) ion ordering in solid solutions, which show unique magnetic, superconducting, optical and catalytic properties;(c) interaction and clustering of multiple defect centres in solid state systems, for example, materials exposed to radiation;(d) structure prediction and properties for complex solids with large unit cells and large clusters or nanoparticles;(e) surface and interface structure and property determination and prediction;(f) free energy calculations of a phase transitions and calculation of diffusion paths and rates;(g) crystal growth of nanoparticles and surfaces.The project is a collaboration between multiple developers as well as academic and industrial users.

The creative industries are crucial to UK social and cultural life and one of the largest and fastest-growing sectors of the economy. Games and media are key pillars for growth in the creative industries, with UK turnovers of £3.5bn and £12.9bn respectively. Research in digital creativity has started to be well supported by governmental funds. To achieve full impact from these investments, translational and audience-facing research activities are needed to turn ideas into commercial practice and societal good. We propose a "Digital Creativity" Hub for such next-step research, which will produce impact from a huge amount of research activity in direct collaboration with a large group of highly engaged stakeholders, delivering impact in the Digital Economy challenge areas of Sustainable Society, Communities and Culture and New Economic Models. York is the perfect location for the DC Hub, with a fast-growing Digital Creativity industry (which grew 18.4% from 2011 to 2012), and 4800 creative digital companies within a 40-mile radius of the city. The DC Hub will be housed in the Ron Cooke Hub, alongside the IGGI centre for doctoral training, world-class researchers, and numerous small hi-tech companies. The DC Hub brings: - A wealth of research outcomes from Digital Economy projects funded by £90m of grants, £40m of which was managed directly by the investigators named in the proposal. The majority of these projects are interdisciplinary collaborations which involved co-creation of research questions and approaches with creative industry partners, and all of them produced results which are ripe for translational impact. - Substantial cash and in-kind support amounting to pledges of £9m from 80 partner organisations. These include key organisations in the Digital Economy, such as the KTN, Creative England and the BBC, major companies such as BT, Sony and IBM, and a large number of SMEs working in games and interactive media. The host Universities have also pledged £3.3m in matched funding, with the University of York agreeing to hire four "transitional" research fellows on permanent contracts from the outset leading to academic positions as a Professor, a Reader and two Lecturers. - Strong overlap with current projects run by the investigators which have complementary goals. These include the NEMOG project to study new economic models and opportunities for games, the Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) centre for doctoral training, with 55+ PhDs, and the Falmouth ERA Chair project, which will contribute an extra 5 five-year research fellowships to the DC Hub, leveraging £2m of EC funding for translational research in digital games technologies. - A diverse and highly active base of 16 investigators and 4 named PDRAs across four universities, who have much experience of working together on funded research projects delivering high-impact results. The links between these investigators are many and varied, and interdisciplinarity is ensured by a group of investigators working across Computer Science, Theatre Film and TV, Electronics, Art, Audio Production, Sociology, Education, Psychology, and Business. - Huge potential for step-change impact in the creative industries, with particular emphasis on video game technologies, interactive media, and the convergence of games and media for science and society. Projects in these areas will be supported by and feed into basic research in underpinning themes of data analytics, business models, human-computer interaction and social science. The projects will range over impact themes comprising impact projects which will be specified throughout the life of the Hub in close collaboration with our industry partners, who will help shape the research, thus increasing the potential for major impact. - A management team, with substantial experience of working together on large projects for research and impact in collaboration with the digital creative industries.

Superconductors have the potential to revolutionise the way the world uses electricity. There are already many practical applications of these materials, ranging from energy transport to uses in medical diagnosis, communications and mass people transport. However for more wide-ranging impact we need to discover materials which have even better properties than are already known today. In order to tune these properties and to guide the search for new materials, knowledge of the fundamental physical reasons why these materials are superconducting is highly desirable. Although this is known for so-called conventional materials, mostly discovered before 1980, an understanding of the superconducting mechanism responsible for copper oxide based high temperature superconductivity, discovered in 1986, is still lacking. The research in this proposal aims to advance our understanding of the electronic structure of copper oxide high-temperature superconductors. We believe this knowledge will provide a major step forward in the world-wide quest to understand and hence improve these materials. We are proposing a wide ranging programme which will study the thermodynamic and quantum coherent properties of extremely well ordered samples of these materials. In less well ordered samples, the signatures of the fundamental symmetry-breaking phase transitions may be smeared out, making them invisible to experiment. Also quantum coherence effects which give unique information about the electronic structure are made unobservable by disorder. We will use techniques developed over the last twenty years to grow highly ordered single crystal samples and study their behaviour under the world's highest available magnetic fields of up to 100 T (which is roughly 2 million times larger than the earth's field) at temperatures less than one degree above absolute zero. From these measurements we will discover how the Fermi surface, which characterises the momentum distribution of the current carrying electrons in the material, evolves with electron concentration. This will give unique and important information to guide the development of a theory of superconductivity in these materials.