Smart materials and technologies for future engineering

The major societal challenges of the next few decades will be addressed in the context of an increasingly resource-constrained world. This brings engineering imperatives in regard to efficiency, in all aspects, and in cross-disciplinary approaches that allow advances in one area to be successfully applied to others to develop innovative and user-centred solutions. This multidisciplinary research presentation offers a flexible approach to these challenges, focused on areas of strength at Northumbria that are cross-cutting in their application to societal needs. The remainder of this presentation gives some examples of the proposed research from two key enabling technologies “Smart materials and surfaces for fluid transportation” and “Materials/structures for energy and micro-fluidics”. Key expertise at Northumbria will be used to address the following topics in energy and materials: • Drag reduction on solid surfaces and liquid-solid interactions, smart surfaces at the molecular level, liquid manipulation through electrowetting, protective and wear resistant materials • Smart functional (piezoelectric/shape memory) thin films, responsive soft materials and nanocomposites for sensors and microactuators, novel materials for energy and communications applications Whilst Northumbria has world-leading research in all the topic areas outlined above, the novelty lies in the combination into the whole systems approach. The best innovations in each topic area will be combined into novel and exciting approaches to the overall challenges in order to deliver the engineering of the smart future.