Prof Geoff Maitland (Immediate Past-President of IChemE) Visits School of Engineering & Pitches for Cleaner Fossil Fuels at the Inaugural Chemical Engineering Diamond Jubilee Keynote Seminar
In optimizing the properties of functional materials it is essential to understand in detail how structure influences properties. Identification of the most important structural parameters is time-consuming and usually investigated by preparing many different chemical modifications of a material, determining their crystal structures, measuring their physical properties and then looking for structure-property correlations. It is also necessary to assume that the chemical modifications have no influence other than to distort the structure, which is often not the case.
The aim of this project is to investigate the friction of rubber and tyre treads on snow. It is a collaborative project with Michelin. We use tribological testing and materials characterisation techniques in a specially designed cold room facility to do this. Ultimately this knowledge will be used to improve tyre traction on snow.
