Dr Rachael C. Tighe MSc PhD

Research fellow

Miss Rachael C. Waugh was a Postgraduate research student within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.

Rachael obtained an MPhys with honours degree in Physics at Lancaster University before going on to study for an MSc in Environmental Technology also at Lancaster University. After travelling and working for 18 months she then re-joined academia and came to the University of Southampton to study for a PhD in the Fluid Structures Interactions and Materials Engineering research groups. Her PhD work focussed on non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques, particularly thermography, applied to composite materials and adhesively bonded joints.

Rachael was awarded the EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship Research where research focused on the development of NDE techniques for more practical applications. This was particularly related to advanced applications of pulsed and pulsed phase thermography as well as the synchronisation and correlation of thermoelastic stress analysis and digital image correlation data to extract complimentary information. Current research is focused on thermographic NDE approaches including development of the techniques to enable on-site use and the development of new approaches to enable applications to novel environments.

Rachael is a National Committee Member of the British Society for Strain Measurement (bssm.org), Secretary for the Thermomechanics and Infrared Imaging Technical Division of the Society of Experimental Mechanics, has been on the organising committee of several international conferences including the International Conference of Experimental Mechanics (2014), the 10th and 11th International Conference on Advances in Experimental Mechanics (2015 and 2016) and is co-chair for the inaugural BSSM’s Postgraduate Experimental Mechanics Conference (2015).