To reduce whole-life costs of the railway system (through increased asset life, reduced maintenance) and generate performance improvements (such as increased service availability and reliability), it is important to select the optimum material composition for railway components. Selecting the optimum materials for wheels and rails is a complex task with many conflicting requirements, including: a range of failures mechanisms, variety of operating and loading conditions and the associated financial implications. This research will establish a comprehensive scientific understanding of the metallurgical characteristics of rail and wheel steels to enable scientifically-informed choices. It will take account of both the specific requirements arising from the peculiarities of railway wheel-rail contact and the economic trade-offs at a system-wide level. Recent development of 'High Performance' (HPRail) rail steel by Tata Steel has shown that improvements in the resistance to both wear and rolling contact fatigue (RCF) can be achieved through judicious choice of alloying elements to alter the microstructural characteristic of the steel. However, the understanding of reasons for the success of such steels requires further fundamental research to establish how the different constituents of steel microstructures react to the forces imposed at the wheel-rail interface. The results of such research will help establish the design rules to engineer steel microstructures that provide a step change in the resistance to key degradation mechanisms with greater predictability of the deterioration rates. The project combines the skills of an interdisciplinary team from four Universities (based at the Universities of Huddersfield, Cambridge, Leeds and Cranfield), necessary to deal with the complexity of the phenomena,

The growing concern over carbon emissions has led the development of alternative, greener and sustainable technologies including thermoelectrics (TE). TE devices are solid-state energy converters that transform thermal energy into electricity, applicable to power generation including transportation, nuclear, and manufacturing industries. A limitation of traditional TE materials is the very narrow temperature range for maximum performance, as low as 50C for Bi2Te3, limited power output, relatively low efficiency, the cost and environmental concerns due to toxicity. If TE technology is to be used economically and reliably, the materials need to exhibit high TE efficiency over a wider temperature window. Oxides, e.g. titanate perovskites, are promising TE materials because of their flexible structure and high temperature stability; their current limitations are the modest efficiency. However, integration of oxide TEs and carbon nanotechnologies has the prospect of enhancing performance, via nanostructuring and band engineering at the nanoscale. Our research vision is to enhance thermoelectric properties of oxides by integrating TE and carbon nanotechnologies, as either carbon (graphene) or carbide, into the oxide microstructure; this will generate carbon-oxide composites and extend the range of operating temperatures. However, the engineering of these composites can only be achieved if we characterize and control both the nanostructuring needed for reduced thermal conductivity, and the interface structures and compositions needed for increased electrical conductivity. Our approach involves experiments and modelling to achieve the following objectives: (1) to fabricate thermoelectrics carbon-oxide composites based on SrTiO3, TiO2, with a range of nanostructures to determine the factors controlling electric and thermal transport; (2) to identify the interactions between oxides and carbon that lead to enhanced performance; (3) to produce atomistic models of target microstructures, and to characterize their stability, topology, composition and electronic structure. This proposal is part of a collaboration with the University of Manchester and Bath. It is novel and timely because exploits novel material processing strategies using a multidisciplinary approach (modelling/experiments) to study emerging technologies for cheap and sustainable energy generation. The UK needs to be at the forefront of this field as there are indeed major programmes in TE in Japan, USA, and Europe. The work programme covers (1) target materials: SrTiO3, TiO2 ceramics, (2) materials processing, (3) microstructural control of oxide-graphene (i.e. La/SrTiO3 with graphene) and oxide-carbide (TiC1-xOx/TiOy) composites, (4) general characterization with routine XRD and SEM, (5) measurements of thermoelectric parameters, (6) characterization of the role and generation of interfaces and nanostructures.

This grant provides additional funding for the EPSRC manufacturing hub: Future Advanced Metrology Hub. Equipment - To facilitate the additional work, two relatively small pieces of optical equipment will be purchased to increase the capability in the optics lab.

Many countries are now suffering after years of insufficient attention to warnings about the need for improved pandemic preparedness. The WHO has declared COVID-19 a pandemic, but its underlying factors, vulnerabilities and impacts go far beyond the health sector, and in Sri Lanka, it is overwhelming government and response agencies. This study will address two, inter-related challenges: How will countries cope if a major natural hazard occurs while the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing? How can pandemic preparedness make use of the existing infrastructure for tackling other hazards? The project team will attempt to understand the potential impact of a pandemic-natural hazard hybrid scenario. It will also seek to improve early warning and preparedness for such an event, as well as the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEW) and disaster risk information that include pandemic/biological hazards, which is also Target G of the SFDRR [1]. We will address these challenges by examining how public health actors be better included within a MHEW environment and how pandemic threats are integrated within national and local DRR strategies. We will explore the impact of COVID-19 on the response capabilities for other hazards, either multiple simultaneous events, or cascading impacts, and consider how COVID-19 and public health surveillance can be synergised with "the last mile" of MHEW. Pandemic is global, but the preparedness and response is local, and that response is very dependent on governance, laws, culture, risk perception and citizen behaviour. The study has been designed in close collaboration with Sri Lankan health and DRR agencies who identified the key gaps that need exploring. The team will develop and disseminate guidance to better incorporate pandemics and other biological hazards into national and local DRR preparedness and response

The textile industry is worth over 3,000 billion dollars, representing 2% of global GPD. However, the model of fast fashion leads to production of "single use" clothes and other textile products. Therefore, textile products have a relatively short lifetime and are often disposed after a few uses. In the UK alone, over 1 million tonnes of textile waste are generated annually, which is significant even when compared with the amount of plastic waste (2.5 million tonnes annually). The majority of textile waste ends in landfills or incineration, while approximately a fifth of textile waste was recycled and reused and only ~1% was used to generate material for producing new clothing. To tackle the textile waste issue, Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) launched the Textiles 2030 initiative recently to call government, textile industry and research institutes to work together and transform the current singular textile industry towards a circular economy in the UK. One of the key targets of Textiles 2030 is to "cut carbon by 50%, sufficient to put the UK textiles sector on a path consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5C". To increase textile waste recycling, various approaches both mechanical and chemical have been investigated. However, although mechanical recycling technology can recycle textile waste composed of a single polymer, it is not efficient to treat complex waste such as polycotton garments (a mixture of polyester (PET) and cotton), a key component of municipal solid waste. Chemical recycling methods aim to break down the textile fibres into their building blocks and then synthesis new polymers and subsequently new fibres via appropriate spinning techniques. But chemical recycling is energy intensive and natural fibres, such as cotton (formed of cellulose) and wool (protein fibre) will be degraded to a point that they cannot be used to generate a fibre again. Recently, researchers at the Biorefining and Bioprocessing Centre at the University of Huddersfield developed an enzymatic assisted recycling process aiming to breakdown cellulose into its constituent sugar glucose and then ferment the glucose into lactic acid, from which a biodegradable plastic polylactic acid (PLA) could be synthesised. Using this technology, the aim is to selectively breakdown cellulose into smaller units to enable its removal from the PET in polycotton. The PET can then be used to make new PET fibre which potentially can be used to make new textiles. It is proposed that by tailoring the enzymes used to breakdown the cellulose the cellulose can be separated from the complex textile waste while maintaining the length of the molecular chains long enough to be re-converted into textile fibre. The recycled short chain cellulose will be characterised and formed into fibre at Technical Textile Centre at the University of Huddersfield. The regenerated fibre from textile waste will be explored for its novel application, such as in wound dressing. The recovered PET will also be characterised and explored for making new cloth. The economic, social, environmental impacts of this process will be assessed. Both the carbon and water footprint in addition to the dependence on non-renewable resources will be evaluated in order to assess the potential environmental benefits. The social impact of the process to all involved stakeholders (industries, retailers, urban and rural communities) will be also examined