ESR Technology Celebrates Staff Successes
Whilst 2020 was a year of many difficulties, both professional and personal, ESR Technology believes in celebrating its employees’ successes. During what might have been the worst year our world has collectively experienced in half a century, 2 of our ESR team have reached the pinnacle of their academic journey. Both Shamsudeen Hassan and Rachel Bingley have successfully defended their theses and been awarded their PhD’s.
Shamsudeen completed his PhD entitled “Onshore cross-country pipelines risk assessment and decision making under uncertainty” with Liverpool John Moores University. Shamsu describes his research as “a project investigating the use of non-historic based pipeline failure data as a basis for undertaking pipeline risk analysis in geographies where there is limited or unreliable data. There is an area where there is a high degree of uncertainty at present and this hinders the reliable evaluation of risk and hard consequences posed by pipeline failures. Investigation of various approaches to compensate for lack of historical data has been explored and used in formulating failure cases under uncertainty, which feeds in the frequency analysis.”
Rachel completed her PhD entitled “Atomic Force Microscopy to evaluate the effect of concentration and reciprocal position on ZDDP tribofilm topography and an assessment of its ability to determine tribofilm durability” with the University of Leeds. Rachel describes her research as “an investigation into the full capabilities of the Atomic Force Microscope as a means of understanding differences in the chemical film formed from a specific engine oil additive. This anti-wear additive is currently essential in preserving the contacts within modern vehicle pistons; however, it is known to poison catalytic converters resulting in a devastating level of exhaust emissions. The increased understanding of this protective chemical film will aid future researchers in the development of an alternative additive, one which will not cause such harmful side effects.”
Shamsu works within ESR Technologies Safety and Risk Management team (SRM) who’s capabilities have been expanded by his research. This personal undertaking of Shamsu’s enables SRM to expand their skill set into carrying out Risk Assessments for Oil and Gas, and similar industries, where either a complete lack or unreliability of data might previously have made such assessments difficult. Rachel, however, works in our Engineering Group (specifically within ESTL) who’s capabilities have been expanded by the introduction of an additional tribologist. Rachel’s background in terrestrial tribological research brings additional research capabilities to ESTL whilst further uniting our sister teams within the Engineering Group.