Research interests
- Modelling and design of electric machines and electromagnetic devices for ship and car propulsion, submersible pumps, waste heat energy recovery, electric turbo compounding, high speed gas compressors and active vibration damping.
- Power electronic converters for interfacing renewable sources and energy storage to the grid, motor control and battery charging and management.
- Microgrid control and energy management.
- Energy management of hybrid drive trains.
- Effect of electromagnetic fields on insects and fish.
Research projects:
A ground-breaking new partnership funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council that brings the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research from the University of Southampton together with BAE Systems, the Centre for Additive Manufacturing at the University of Nottingham and Lloyd’s Register to create new materials and intelligent structures that will control underwater noise, reducing its harmful impact on marine wildlife.
This project will provide materials technologies to physically safeguard Li-Ion and Na-Ion batteries against thermal runaway and thermally accelerated degradation, superseding existing external safety measures. Rather than changing the active material on the positive side, we will replace conductivity additives, an otherwise passive component of the electrodes, with smart materials. Electrical resistivity of the smart additives will increase by orders of magnitude at or above temperatures where it would otherwise be unsafe to operate the battery. As a consequence, uncontrolled electrochemical reactions, the initial heat source in a thermal runaway event, will cease, making electrochemically initiated thermal runaway impossible.
Smart additives will be developed utilising rational materials design driven by close integration between simulations at the atomistic and micro-scale with a comprehensive synthesis and characterisation program including a full array of in operando advanced electrochemical/spectroscopic techniques and x-ray tomography, complemented by state-of-the-art ex situ materials characterisation. Relevant abuse protocols will be developed and utilised to test batteries comprising electrodes with the smart additives at the cell and pack level. Further, we will exploit secondary characteristics of the smart additives to realise and demonstrate high-fidelity, non-invasive diagnostics and battery management to add an active safety layer for superior longevity.
Research group
Mechatronics Engineering Group
Affiliate research group
Energy Technology
Research project(s)
This project will use the neutron instruments at ISIS at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to investigate the degradation of batteries as a result of operation under Vehicle to Grid (V2G) condition.
This project is supported by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and has five UK academic partners and three Chinese partners. It will study lithium battery cell development and Vehicle to Grid (V2G) operation to investigate grid scale energy storage, from a battery perspective ‘upwards’ and not from a network level 'downwards'.
Professor Suleiman SharkhEngineering, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton. SO17 1BJ United Kingdom
Room Number: 7/5027/M7
