Traditionally the inspection of welds at manufacture is highly challenging, time-consuming and expensive due to the complexities and logistics of the environment and process. This proposal seeks to investigate the potential for automated inspection at the point of manufacture of future nuclear assets.

Traditionally, welding and inspection of high-integrity joints are separate, sequential, often manual processes in manufacturing and repair. Ultimately, these limitations reduce productivity, throughput, schedule certainty and increase rework if defects are detected at weld completion. As welding is a dynamic volumetric process, fusing joints of depth and width, this project seeks to exploit the volumetric imaging capability of ultrasonics, and introduce this inspection modality directly into the welding process control loop. By investigating robotic in-process ultrasonic inspection and control, this project aims to deliver high-integrity welds right, first time, every time and overcome current technical and process limitations.

The proposal is directly relevant to current and future nuclear sector requirements and presents a great opportunity to become involved early in what is a very important and strategic area of focus, not only in the UK but worldwide.

The student will be based in the newly opened £2.1M Sensor Enabled Automation & Control Hub (SEARCH) Laboratory, working alongside a research team of over 35 researchers and PhD Students, while also having access to state of the art sensor, robotic and welding equipment. 

The student will undertake specific industrial technical training courses (Ultrasonics, Welding and KUKA Advanced Robotic Programming) along with the University Research Development Program (RDP) to deliver training and development on traditional PhD activities such as presentations, conferences and journal writing. 

The student will work in collaboration with the lead industry partner to gain a greater appreciation of the specific industrial challenges and opportunity for automated inspection during fusion welding.

This project promises to be an exciting, fun and industrially relevant project, working alongside skilled engineers and scientists with state-of-the-art robotic equipment to delivery meaningful industrial change.