MSc/PgDip Sustainable Engineering: Offshore Renewable Energy

This class aims to provide you with an understanding of the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development. The social, environmental and economic impact of development strategies will be identified and the mitigation of negative impacts discussed.

Against the background of international commitments on atmospheric emissions, diminishing fossil fuel resources and the liberalisation of energy markets, this class examines sustainable options for energy production, supply and consumption.

The aim is to give you an understanding of current trends and to enable a critical evaluation of emerging ideas, technologies and policies.

This class aims to provide you with an understanding of the operation of modern electrical power systems along with the techniques to undertake a basic technical analysis of key electrical devices and systems.

This module aims to provide you with a theoretical and practical knowledge of the finite element method and the skills required to analyse marine structures with ANSYS graphical user interface (GUI).

This module covers:

• introduction to finite element analysis and ANSYS GUI
• truss elements and applications
• solid elements and applications
• beam elements and applications
• plane stress, plane strain and axisymmetry concepts
• plane elements and applications
• plate & shell elements and applications
• assembly process and constructing of the global stiffness matrix

At the end of this module you'll be able to:

• understand the basics of finite element analysis
• understand how to perform finite element analysis by using a commercial finite element software
• understand specifying necessary input parameters for the analysis
• understand how to visualize and evaluate the results

There is one exam and one coursework assignment. The exam is during the exam period of the first semester. Exam has a weight of 70% and coursework assignment has a weight of 30%.

This module aims to provide you with:

• principles and methodologies to analyse and evaluate the marine renewable energy sources potential
• principles and methodologies to analyse and compare the main offshore wind, wave, and tidal systems available

This module covers:

• introduction to marine renewable energy systems: context, trends, basic concepts
• offshore wind energy resource characterisation and analysis
• wave energy resource characterisation and analysis
• tidal energy resource characterisation and analysis
• marine Renewable Energy Systems economics: an introduction
• offshore wind turbines: main technologies and modelling approaches
• wave energy converters: main technologies and modelling approaches

At the end of this module you'll be able to:

• analyse the potential of the main marine renewable energy sources (offshore wind, wave, and tidal)
• classify and compare, from a techno-economic point of view, the main offshore wind, wave, and tidal energy systems
• propose a preliminary design of a marine renewable energy system for a given geographical area
• discuss on the main challenges of the experimental testing of marine renewable energy systems
• demonstrate an awareness of the wider, multidisciplinary context for marine renewable energy devices

Assessment and feedback are in the form of:

• quick quizzes for formative feedback
• a class test, mid-way through the module, weighting 40% of the final module mark
• an exam, at the end of the module, weighting 60% of the final module mark

This module aims to provide you with an understanding of the underlying physics associated with scale model testing of wind wave and tidal current devices and the ability to execute and analyse hydrodynamic tests to assess the performance of marine energy generating systems.

This module covers:

• lab testing: device testing in wave tanks, towing tanks
• similarity, extrapolation to full scale, and scaling challenges for lab testing of marine renewable devices
• experiment design guidelines and standards
• instrumentation: measurement of fluid velocity, water surface elevation, pressure, force, displacement, velocity, and acceleration
• non-intrusive measurement techniques including PIV, LDA, motion capture, and ultrasonic probes
• measures of performance: linearity, repeatability, hysteresis, calibration
• data acquisition and analysis: data sampling, filtering, processing, statistical analysis
• sources of uncertainty, bias and precision, accumulation of uncertainty
• basic linear wave theory
• basic mechanical oscillator theory

At the end of this module you'll be able to:

• be aware of key instrumentation technologies, both traditional and modern, which may be used in them, and application of best-practice guidelines/standards
• understand different scaling laws which may apply from lab-scale or intermediate-scale field-trials to full scale
• be familiar with basic approaches to data analysis and be able to estimate the levels of uncertainty of their measurements
• be aware of techniques which can help them choose an efficient set of tests in the context of a highly time- and cost-limited campaign

Assessment and feedback are in the form of the online quizzes, laboratory exercises and coursework (three lab reports) which will test your understanding of the learning outcomes and your ability to apply your learning to problems. You'll also give a presentation on one of the labs.

This class provides a structured introduction to the design management process, issues and tools.

The class aims to introduce elements of financial engineering that are applied to reduce risk of business insolvency and enhance the financial robustness of business enterprises.

You'll explore the entire process of structuring a risk problem, modelling it, supporting and communicating recommendations, both theoretically and in practice. Risk management is linked with decision analysis in so far as we explore decision-making under uncertainty and it has links with quantitative business analysis as we explore the use of statistics in understanding risk. However, the topic has some unique attributes such as risk communication and the role that experts play in risk assessment.