Friday 28 October 2011

Open Nottingham Seminar

In implementing the Open Nottingham programme, the University of Nottingham has strategically embraced an agenda of open access to teaching. More details at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/open/opennottingham.aspx  

Details of the next Open Nottingham seminar

Date - 1st November ,2011 (Tuesday)
Time – 11:00 – 12:00
Venue - A19, Nottingham Geospatial Building, Jubilee Campus

Speaker: Professor Andrew Long,
                   Dean of Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham

Presentation Title :  TexGen - an Open Source Story


Abstract

The Polymer Composites Group in the Faculty of Engineering at Nottingham have developed software for modelling the geometry of technical textiles over the last 13 years. The software, known as TexGen, is used to generate numerical models to predict the mechanical and physical behaviour of textiles and their composites, and underpins a number of research projects funded by EPSRC, TSB and industry. A variety of collaborations are involved in this work, involving a range of universities and companies.

Due to increasing requests from external users to access the software, in 2006 we made the code available as an open source project via the Sourceforge website. Since this time over 7000 downloads of executable and source code have been registered, and a number of new collaborations have resulted. These include projects valued at around £500,000 that have arisen directly as a result of open source provision, with another £500,000 indirectly attributable to this decision. Most importantly for the group, dissemination of the code as open source was viewed extremely favourably by EPSRC, and this approach coupled with the collaborative research that resulted were major factors in the renewal of our prestigious Platform Grant in 2009.


Biography

Professor Andrew Long is the  Dean of Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. He has published over 250 papers including around 80 refereed journal papers, and has co-authored/edited three textbooks related to polymer composites. He is Director of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Composites and of the University of Nottingham Institute for Aerospace Technology, which represents the Aerospace Priority Group. He is chairman of SAMPE UK & Ireland Chapter and co-organiser of several international conference series. In 2006 he was awarded the Institute of Materials Rosenhain Medal in recognition of distinguished achievement in materials science. He is also strongly involved with Open Nottingham.

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