The Engineering Council has announced that it has become a Corporate Supporter of the “Building a Safer Future Charter”.
This aligns with their existing work on building safety, including the development of new contextualised competence requirements that complement their internationally-recognised standards.
The Building a Safer Future Charter was created to promote an urgent and positive culture and behavioural change in the safety of the built environment, and is about putting people’s safety first in how we plan for, design, build, maintain, and look after the safety of the buildings we live, work or play in, and protect those that use them.
The Charter sets out five commitments that demonstrate commitment to protecting life by putting safety first, ahead of all other building priorities. Corporate Supporters, including the Engineering Council, agreed to support these commitments and promote them within their sphere of influence.
Engineering Council CEO Alasdair Coates said “The Engineering Council’s vision is to maintain society’s confidence and trust in the engineering profession. We achieve this through working strategically with partners and are pleased to be supporting this important Charter, part of our wider work
on competence and the crucial issue of building safety”.
Dame Judith Hackitt’s independent inquiry into building regulations and fire safety
clearly identified failure of leadership and culture as key underlying causes of the Grenfell Tower disaster. The ‘Building a Safer Future Charter’ was initiated in response by a group of early adopters including contractors, housing associations and local authorities supported by MHCLG with a vision of having an industry committed to putting people’s safety first.
A series of environmental-friendly polyvinyl butyral/phenol formaldehyde resin (PVB/PF) composite coatings with various PF contents were prepared by a solution blending method. The tribological and anticorrosion properties of the composite coatings as well as the influence of PF content were studied.
The results showed that the addition of PF can significantly improve the wear resistance of the PVB coating, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) results showed that the corrosion resistance of the composite coatings can also be significantly improved after immersing in 3.5 wt% NaCl aqueous solution for 30 days.
The researchers, claim that the good tribological and anticorrosion properties of composite coating are due to the uniform and dense structure formed by PVB and PF, which has good flexibility, high mechanical strength and excellent barrier properties. The study was published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 158, September 2021.
Double layer powder coating to enhance corrosion protection
A novel epoxy resin modified PVC powder coating was used as a primer and pure PVC powder coating as a topcoat, for the corrosion protection of steel in a marine environment.
Test results revealed that the material obtained the highest adhesion and salt spray resistance when the epoxy content in the primer was 50 wt%. In contrast to the pure epoxy coating and the pure PVC coating, the EP-PVC coating exhibited an excellent corrosion resistance, owning to the good adhesion of the composite primer and the good barrier and corrosion resistance of the topcoat.
The study was published in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 158, September 2021.
Sika has agreed to sell its European industrial coatings business, based in Germany, to The Sherwin-Williams Company. The transaction is expected to be completed at the beginning of 2022.
The transaction includes the European industrial coatings business with the main location and manufacturing facility in Vaihingen, Germany. The product range encompasses anticorrosive and fire protection coatings which are mainly sold in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, and Austria.
The Winoa group, a worldwide supplier of abrasive media for shot blasting operations, has announced the group’s 60th anniversary, as well as the largest steel media factory in the world, the Cheylas factory in Isère, France.
The company, formerly known as Wheelabrator Allevard, currently has more than 800 employees, is established on four continents, with a total of nine factories, four test centres; and three research centres.
According to the company, for this 60th anniversary, they are taking the opportunity to implement a renewed and improved growth plan, as well as the development and marketing of new services and products.
The steel shot produced by Winoa under the name “W Abrasives®” is used in the manufacturing and processing of thousands of metal products and articles.
For more details on WAbrasives, see, www.wabrasives.com
The Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials has called for co-ordinated action to address the significant degradation challenges presented by the transition to net zero through a ‘Technology Roadmap for Net Zero’.Such a roadmap would select which technologies should be prioritised for investment and also be attached to key dates linked to when they’re expected to come online. It could also define the most cost-effective investment pathway to net zero, allowing industry and academia to develop Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) programmes in alignment with clear timescales for delivery.
For many sustainable and low carbon technologies, the degradation of structural materials presents significant and ongoing challenges which can limit the performance, operational life, and sustainability of assets. For example, the financial impact of corrosion, which represents just one of the mechanisms under the umbrella term of degradation, has been estimated at 3.4% of the world’s GDP, thus significant savings could be achieved through better understanding and effective management of materials degradation.
To explore these issues in more depth, Royce commissioned a major landscaping exercisewhich examined the impact of degradation on wind power generation, carbon capture use and storage (CCS), nuclear fission power generation, transportation technologies (air, road, rail and sea), and hydrogen production and usage, with the overall aim of identifying the materials-related issues affecting the lifetime of structural components, and prioritise the research needed to improve the lifetime of these components.
The report identified a need for high-level strategic direction to guide R&D efforts towards these degradation challenges, but stated that in order for such a strategy to have authority and credibility, it is imperative that it should be developed as a collaborative effort between senior policymakers, along with a broad range of cross-sectoral academic and industrial stakeholders. Bill Hedges, ICorr President, and project champion for the Royce landscape study said: “Significant savings and societal benefits can be achieved through better understanding and effective management of degradation issues. Yet at the moment funding calls continue to encourage an isolated approach to investigating degradation mechanisms and this report recommends that only with a significant change in leadership and policy will the obvious opportunities for transformational change be grasped and ultimately realised. While the report confirms that there were no ‘show-stopping’ issues associated with materials degradation that will block the path to net zero, there are however many opportunities to reduce the costs associated with this.”
As a consequence of this study, the research, development and innovation programmes required to support net zero and tackle the degradation challenge, need to be a collaboration between governing bodies, UK Research and Innovation, major industry players, the supply chain, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and academia.
The full report can be found at, https://www.royce.ac.uk/collaborate/roadmapping-landscaping/degradation/
For further information, contact Dr Andrew Bowfield, Business Development Manager, Henry Royce Institute,E: andrew.bowfield@manchester.ac.uk, and the report can be found at, https://www.royce.ac.uk/collaborate/roadmapping-landscaping/degradation/
Editor’s Note : The Henry Royce Institute is the UK national institute for advanced materials research and innovation, with the aim of growing, and supporting, world-wide recognition of the excellence of UK materials research, accelerating commercial exploitation and delivering positive economic and societal impact for the UK. With its base in Manchester, it is funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation.
Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser CEO of UK Research and Innovation opened the new Henry Royce Institute Hub Building at the University of Manchester, on 7th September.
Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor at The University of Manchester and Dame Julia King, the Baroness Brown of Cambridge and Chair of the Henry Royce Institute, welcomed guests to Royce’s flagship building at the university and set out the capabilities of the new UK centre for materials research and meeting place for the advanced materials community.
Following a tour of the building’s laboratories and meeting researchers, Dame Ottoline unveiled a plaque marking the official opening of the Royce Hub Building, which will be the hub to 400 researchers, PhD Students and professional services staff driving research and innovation in advanced materials.
The event also saw an important keynote video message from The Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng MP, Secretary of State for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, who highlighted the importance of Government investment in innovation and technology translation. The Business Secretary noted that Advanced Materials & Manufacturing is a key technology family of “UK strength and opportunity”, as highlighted in the Government’s recently announced UK Innovation Strategy: Leading the future by creating it.
The building hosts £45 million of new state-of-the-art equipment alongside existing facilities in Manchester for biomedical materials, metals processing, digital fabrication, and sustainable materials research, including the new Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). In addition, there is a variety of collaboration spaces for industry engagement, helping to accelerate the development and commercialisation of advanced materials.
During the event, Carol Holden OBE, from the Northern Automotive Alliance presented on the Royce role in industrial innovation and Mia Maric, winner of IOM3 Young Person’s Lecture Competition talked about her Manchester PhD experience and the benefits of using Royce’s equipment and expertise in her research.
Royce’s presence in Manchester extends well beyond this new building it also has substantial space and equipment in the Alan Turing Building, together with facilities in the National Graphene Institute, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology and at the Dalton Nuclear Institute.It will soon also extend its reach into the new Manchester Engineering Campus Development – the MECD – which is the single largest home for engineering in any UK university.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
