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Research Interests

Dr Campbell’s primary research is focused on numerical modelling of materials and structures during transient events such as impact and crash, with 20 years experience leading multidisciplinary research projects funded by the EU, Innovate UK, ESA and industry, academia and research organisations (UK and internationally). This expertise is applied to the aeronautics, space, defence, automotive, manufacturing, energy and offshore sectors. 

Research Areas

Fundamental development of physical models and non-linear numerical methods

• Meshless methods for non-linear solid and fluid mechanics - methods and code development for Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH).
• Artificial viscosity methods for shock wave modelling.
• Implementation of boundary and contact conditions in numerical codes.
• Constitutive models for strength, damage and shock response of isotropic and orthotropic materials (metallic, composite, ceramic, polymer).
• Numerical implementation of constitutive models for meshed (finite element) and meshless (SPH) codes.
• Experimental characterisation of materials.

Application of explicit numerical methods to the transient response of solids and structures

• Predictive analysis of lightweight structures
• Crashworthiness and ditching analysis for aircraft and helicopters.
• Impact engineering: Ballistic and foreign object impact on structures, bird strike, ice impact on structures, fragmentation of metals, hypervelocity impact on spacecraft.
• Transient fluid-structure interaction: aircraft ditching, liquid sloshing, bird strike, extreme wave impact.
• Process modelling for metallic additive manufacturing.
• Structural ultimate load prediction.

Doctoral Research: Applications from outstanding candidates interested in doctoral research are welcome at any time of the year. Please email james.campbell@brunel.ac.uk.

Selected research projects

• Principal Investigator. Development of Advanced Material Modelling for Metal Additive Manufacturing (TWI/Lloyds Register Foundation).
• Principal Investigator. Basalt Fibre Reinforced HDPE for Wave Energy Converters
• Co-Investigator.
• Principal Investigator and Project Coordinator.
• Principal Investigator. 

Research clients and partners include

• Airbus Defence and Space
• Airbus Operations
• Alenia Aeronautica
• AWE
• Dassault Aviation
• DLR (German Aerospace Centre)
• EPSRC
• European Commission (FP5, FP6, FP7)
• European Space Agency
• Innovate UK
• Lloyds Register Foundation
• ONERA (French Aerospace Research Centre)
• Raytheon Systems
• TWI