Dr Lloyd Fletcher BEng (Hons), PhD
Lecturer, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow
Dr Lloyd Fletcher is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering Department at the University of Southampton.
Lloyd’s current research focues on the emerging field of image-based mechanics. The underlying idea of image-based mechanics is to leverage advances in computing power and digital imaging technology to design new data-rich mechanical tests. Image-based measurements provide orders of magnitude more information than traditional point sensors (e.g. strain gauges) because the displacement of many subsets of pixels can be tracked in a ‘full-field’ manner. These types of measurements can also be directly interfaced with engineering simulations (e.g. finite element analysis) through explicitly simulating the imaging process itself.
His most recent work has involved the application of ultra-high speed imaging technology (>1 Million fps) to overcome the limitations of traditional point sensors when testing materials at high strain rates. Part of this work has focused on imaging simulations to optimise data-rich experiments and predict experimental errors a-priori. The aim of Lloyd’s Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship is to develop image-based methods specifically adapted for obtaining the mechanical behaviour of bone under impact loading.
Lloyd completed his undergraduate degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Adelaide, Australia at the end of 2011. He then went on to complete his PhD at the same institution graduating at the end of 2015. Lloyd then moved to the University of Southampton in 2016 where he worked as a research fellow for two years before obtaining a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship (ECF-2018-212) in 2018. He started work as a Lecturer in the Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering Department at the University of Southampton in 2020 where he teaches topics related to solid mechanics and structures.