Bath University awarded £3.2m funding for new Centre for Low Emission Vehicle Research

Bath University's Powertrain and Vehicle Research Centre has received an EPSRC grant of £2m which will see the current vehicle facility upgraded and branded as the Centre for Low Emission Vehicle Research (CLEVeR). Further funding from the TSB and a collaborative industry project has also been secured.

 

An additional investment from the University of £600,000 will see the Centre establish a platform where fundamental academic research can be undertaken alongside applied investigations in a world class vehicle research facility. The Centre will address many of the future research challenges associated with current and future low and ultra-low carbon vehicles under real world driving conditions.

 

The University aims to offer an inclusive and accessible research capability currently prohibitive or non-existent to many academic and even industrial research teams and especially SMEs.

 

It will also facilitate lab-vehicle-lab (LVL) research which will provide the capability to validate and inform a raft of fundamental modeling and simulation work aimed at whole and subsystem vehicle performance, as well as addressing the complex issue of ‘scalability’.

 

The Centre aims to bring together and forge new national and international research collaborations which are able to address a number of critical research questions surrounding future low carbon passenger vehicles.

 

Professor Gary Hawley, the lead investigator, said: “The current vehicle facility has served our research needs well for the past decade and we have undertaken ground breaking work for a host of companies including Ford and JLR. The upgraded facility will see research capability open up in the area of future fuels, electric and hybrid electric vehicles and their sub-systems and will be the only one of its type in the UK.”

 

Additional investigators are Dr Chris Brace, Dr Sam Akehurst and Dr Chris Bannister.

 

Success with the Technology Strategy Board's Low Carbon Vehicles Integrated Delivery Program has also seen the PVRC secure £257,000 within a collaborative project led by HiETA Technologies of Bristol. The project, entitled ‘Selective Laser Melting for Engines (SLaME)’, will investigate a powder bed fusion version of additive manufacturing, to design and build parts/sub-systems for ultra-lightweight, efficient vehicle engines. This continues a running theme of research in PVRC focusing on fuel efficient vehicles. The project is led by Dr Colin Copeland and Dr Sam Akehurst.

 

In addition, Dr Chris Brace and Dr Sam Akehurst have also secured £874,000 of funding in a collaborative project with Ashwoods Automotive TATA Motors European Technical Centre (TMETC). This will develop a new research relationship with TMETC, but builds on two previous TSB projects and a Knowledge Transfer Account that the PVRC have undertaken with Ashwoods.