Damage limitation

Governments and industries worldwide face an annual bill of many billions of pounds resulting from general mechanical failures, some caused by natural disasters such as earthquakes.

Bristol University has received a grant equal to 25 per cent of the UK’s annual investment in engineering higher education research to set up a centre to study various themes in performance-based engineering and find ways to reduce these losses.

The Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamic Engineering (BLADE) is a new academic concept, integrating world-class expertise and analytical and experimental techniques. The lab has been set up with a £15m grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Office for Science and Technology (OST) and the Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF).

Because BLADE has received the UK’s biggest single engineering grant, confidence is high that the research will yield significant applicable technology.

BLADE has six laboratories, including an earthquake and large structures lab containing a 15m strong wall and a 3m x 3m shaking table (the only one in a UK academic facility), an automatic control and test lab, and a modelling and simulation lab. The facility also houses an environmentally-controlled materials lab which provides a tightly controlled environment for materials-testing equipment. Each lab is engaged in projects of varying scale, and the integrated research often overlaps between disciplines and projects.