Babcock International Group (United Kingdom)

The history of the Nigeria/Biafra war is berserk with many tantrums that spill from the imagination of the people who tell the story. The objectivity or subjectivity of the author’s account spill from the side he has decided to domicile his thought and augments, but to any discerning mind, the war was one fought by the lgbos in present day Nigeria to survive as a people. Part of what makes modern warfare is the kind of ammunition used in the execution of the war. The Biafran soldiers were not privileged to acquire some of these modern ammunitions as they were denied by the western powers that supported the Nigeria government basically because of their economic interests. The Biafrans, in a bid to protect themselves and survive, formed a Research and Production unit (RAP). It was this unit, populated by young Biafran scientists that came up with the idea of the Ogbunigwe bomb. By the end of the war, this bomb had become a nightmare to Nigeria and their allies. This paper will explain the origin of the Ogbunigwe bomb, how it got its name, its impact in the war and how Nigeria failed to cash-in on this innovation after the war. This work intends to fill this gap in literature and add to the discourse in the historiography of Biafra wartime domestic weapon development. The findings show that the Ogbunigwe bomb was borne out of necessity for the Biafrans to defend themselves in the face of imminent extermination by the Nigeria government through the existing political class and the army. The methodology for this paper is purely qualitative and the sources are derived from primary and secondary materials.

The increased demand for cost-efficient manufacturing and metrology inspection solutions for complex-shaped components in High-Value Manufacturing (HVM) sectors requires increased production throughput and precision. This drives the integration of automated robotic solutions. However, the current manipulators utilizing traditional programming approaches demand specialized robotic programming knowledge and make it challenging to generate complex paths and adapt easily to unique specifications per component, resulting in an inflexible and cumbersome teaching process. Therefore, this body of work proposes a novel software system to realize kinesthetic guidance for path planning in real-time intervals at 250 Hz, utilizing an external off-the-shelf force–torque (FT) sensor. The proposed work is demonstrated on a 500 mm2 near-net-shaped Wire–Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) complex component with embedded defects by teaching the inspection path for defect detection with a standard industrial robotic manipulator in a collaborative fashion and adaptively generating the kinematics resulting in the uniform coupling of ultrasound inspection. The utilized method proves superior in performance and speed, accelerating the programming time using online and offline approaches by an estimate of 88% to 98%. The proposed work is a unique development, retrofitting current industrial manipulators into collaborative entities, securing human job resources, and achieving flexible production.

This paper details a research study that was undertaken by Babcock ME&S behalf of the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) to improve the understanding of cooling performance of Phase Change Materials (PCMs). The Chilled Water Plants (CWP) on naval platforms are often not optimised to cope with high peak thermal demands whilst operating in challenging climates. The cooling demands on future platforms are set to increase with the introduction of high energy systems such as Laser Directed Energy Weapons (LDEWs), driving the exploration of alternative cooling technologies that have the potential to improve system efficiency and size. Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage (LHTES) systems utilise PCMs and have the ability to supplement the Chilled Water (CW) system and smooth cooling loads at peak demand. Phase Change Materials are substances which absorb and release large amounts of latent heat when undergoing a change in physical state. A LHTES tank representative of scaled down naval system was modelled using 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in ANSYS Fluent. Hydrated salts were chosen as the PCM due to the favourable thermal properties. The thermal characteristics of the tank and the viability as a cooling system were assessed by simulating a variety of thermal load profiles. The computational model acts as a digital twin of an experimental setup, which will later be used for validation. This paper is primarily focussed on the approach to modelling the tank, model parameters and findings.

Sleep and fatigue were investigated in aviation search and rescue, firefighting, emergency medical services and offshore transfer operations in 210 participants, for 21 days each, across 17 datasets in seven countries. Sleep data were collected using wrist-worn actigraphs and sleep diaries. Sustained attention was assessed using a 5-min Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT). Duty information was provided from corporate IT systems. Despite the number of 24 h operations, most work occurred during daytime hours, and most sleep occurred at night. There were seasonal changes in work and sleep patterns, with naps used to augment total sleep time. The proportion of sleep occurring during duty varied from zero to 30%. Differences in PVT response times were trivial to small. Legislation that defines flight, duty time and minimum rest limits assume that sleep is not obtained during duty periods, apart from some napping under Fatigue Risk Management Systems (FRMS). However, especially in cases where the aviation service requires waiting for tasks (e.g. search and rescue, emergency medical response), this assumption may not always hold. FRMS should accommodate different modes of working that safely facilitate sleep during duty time where appropriate.

The issue surrounding the shortage of reference materials has long been discussed and becoming progressively important as the nuclear industry faces the challenges of decommissioning, increasing the requirement for the analysis of a wide range of radionuclides in diverse sample types. To meet demand the radiochemical methods need to be flexible and robust whilst maintaining a high level of quality, essential to underpinning public and environmental safety in a highly regulated sector. Integral to the process of method development, validation, and performance evaluation is the use of reference materials which provide the confidence in the measurement. Currently there is an acute shortage of certified, solid, reference materials due to costs associated with production and availability of suitable material. An alternative to adopting the formal intercomparison exercise approach was explored by the UK’s Analyst Informal Working Group (AIWG). The members recognized the shortage of suitable, solid materials containing a range of alpha, beta and gamma emitters and identified three mixed biota samples. The molluscs, winkles and crustacea contained a mix of environmental activity level radionuclides (14C, 40K, 90Sr, 99Tc, 137Cs, 239+240Pu, 241Pu and 241Am) and were dispatched to 12 laboratories in the UK and Europe in the Summer of 2017. Following analysis, using several techniques, the results were evaluated in terms of levels of precision, sensitivity and limits of detection. The results of the study showed all the radionuclides were successfully analysed by the laboratories to a level of precision and accuracy consistent with that achieved through routine analysis. The exercise demonstrated the viability and benefits of adopting the intercomparison exercise approach, which uses consensus values, to produce fit for purpose reference materials to practically address the shortage.

Positive displacement pumps produce flow and pressure ripple due to their pumping mechanism. Two ISO standard methods for measuring pump ripple were compared in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, reliability and practical difficulty. These were the “secondary source” (SS) method (ISO 10767-1: 1996) and the “2 pressures / 2 systems” (2P2S) method (ISO 10767-1: 2015). The 2P2S method has recently replaced the secondary source as the ISO standard for precision testing although the UK has retained the SS method for its BS ISO standard. The methods produced similar source impedance and flow ripple results. The SS method enabled a wider range of operating conditions to be tested due to the more flexible circuit arrangement but the impedance results were affected by interference between the test pump and secondary source at the pumping harmonic frequencies. It was found that the simpler 2P2S circuit allowed measurements to be taken faster, but measurements were only valid at the pumping harmonic frequencies. Both methods were found to produce repeatable results provided there was no trapped air in the circuit. Overall, the SS method was considered the stronger technique in terms of repeatability, accuracy, sensitivity and practicality, but it had a more complex data processing and experimental set up. It had more flexibility, which enabled the pump to be tested over the widest range of operating conditions, and the fluid borne noise characteristics of the test pump could be evaluated completely. The authors consider that the 2P2S method could be improved by the inclusion of a third transducer, and that it would be beneficial to retain the SS method as an alternative Standard.

The inclining experiment is typically performed for all new-build ships and after any major refit. The purpose of the inclining experiment is to establish the vertical distance of the centre-of-mass of the ship above its keel in the lightship condition. This value is then taken as the point of reference when loading the ship, for establishing the ‘in-service’ stability, throughout the life of the ship. Experimental uncertainty analysis is commonly utilised in hydrodynamic testing to establish the uncertainty in a result as a function of the input variables. This can in turn be utilised to establish an interval about the result that may be expected to encompass a large fraction of the distribution of values that could reasonably be attributed to the measurement. This paper provides a methodology for calculating a confidence interval for the location of the centre-of-mass of a ship from an inclining experiment; and ultimately, in any load condition.The uncertainty compared to an assumed metacentric height of 0.15m is provided for four classes of ship: buoy tender 0.15±0.15m (±100%); super yacht 0.150±0.033m (±22.0%); supply ship 0.150±0.047m (±31.3%), container ship 0.150±0.029m (±19.3%), ropax 0.150±0.077m (±100%).

Offshore wind farms and naval vessels are examples of complex systems. A number of differences exist, e.g. the first is an exemplar of a developing technology, the second a technology having been developed and enhanced over centuries. Never the less a number of similarities exist, e.g. the development of responsive systems in physically demanding environments. Each of the technologies adheres to a prescribed product lifecycle, e.g. “ISO 15288, Systems and software engineering – System life cycle processes”, whereby each phase has distinct information and knowledge requirements. Furthermore, the adoption of a structured lifecycle ensures each technology considers the complete lifecycle and its integration within a potential system of systems. This cross sectoral study will review in-service knowledge management in two different fields of engineering, firstly Offshore Wind Generation which is a complex infrastructure system and secondly Royal Navy vessels which are complex marine engineering systems.