Valter Jantara Junior, a second year Metallurgy PhD student at Birmingham from Brazil supported through the Science without Borders Scheme, recently won the Len Gelman Award for the Best Paper by an Early Career Researcher at the first World Congress of Condition Monitoring.

Mr Jantara’s paper entitled “Evaluation of Damage Mechanics of Industrial Wind Turbine Gearboxes”, investigated the damage mechanisms influencing wind turbine gearboxes by considering the root cause of failure of samples retrieved from the field supported by finite element analysis simulations in the context of condition monitoring diagnosis and prognosis.

Condition monitoring comprises various types of techniques such as acoustic emission and vibration analysis in order to assess the health of machinery during operation and identity early signs of faults that may be developing with time. Spotting potential faults early allows maintenance and repairs to be planned ahead, improving the safety, reliability, lifetime and availability of machinery while reducing operational cost.

The World Congress of Condition Monitoring is the successor to the International Conference of Condition Monitoring and Machinery Fault Prevention Technologies organised annually by the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing (BINDT) and the International Society of Condition Monitoring (ISCM). The event took place in London between 13 and 15 June and embraced all aspects of condition monitoring and related areas.

Mr Jantara’s paper, which was co-authored by Jun Zhou, Sanaz Roshanmanesh, Farzad Hayati, Siavash Hajiabady, X. Li, Hanshan Dong and Mayorkinos Papaelias, forms part of Birmingham’s research agenda on Condition Monitoring within the School of Metallurgy and Materials. The NDT and Condition Monitoring Research Group at M+M, currently led by Senior Lecturer Dr Papaelias, is involved in pioneering research focusing on power generation and transport applications with a particular emphasis in the renewable energy and rail sectors.

Reflecting on winning an award early in his research career, Mr Jantara said:

“I’m proud that my research paper was recognised at the World Congress of Condition Monitoring. The award demonstrates the usefulness and impact of the engineering research undertaken at Birmingham and the opportunities that are available to early stage researchers here.”