**Engineering: Fully Funded M2A MSc by Research Scholarship: Optimising Strain Gauges Through Advanced Finite Element (FEA) Modelling
**Start date: October 2019
Supervisors: Dr W Harrison and Dr A Evans
Sponsoring company: Flintec
Flintec is a world-leading manufacturer in the precision weight measurements sector, which produces precision products for a wide range of different industries, including medical, retail and industry. In 1968, two Swedish engineers established a weighing scale design company. Since then, the company has expanded across multiple continents investing in technologies, staff and knowledge.
This post will remain open until a suitable candidate is found and we recommend you apply as soon as possible.
Over the past few years, Flintec has seen a rise in demand for its load cells, which has applied pressure on our engineering design hubs to innovate and produce new technology. Some of the technology inherent to Flintec includes the method of producing strain gauges as well as load cell designs.
The strain gauge is incorporated into a Wheatstone bridges circuit, that is balanced and compensated for variations in temperature once installed into the load cell. The bonding, positioning and design of the strain gauge is critical to minimising detrimental changes in performance. This can affect the non-linear behaviour of the signal output, creep, zero drift and the detection of mechanical hysteresis.
Flintec is now building a world class centre of excellence in Cardiff with new buildings, infrastructure, investment and jobs growth. There are plenty of exciting career opportunities and international travel to the USA and Asia.
The focus of this project will be to:
- Build and develop strain gauge FEA models.
- Calibrate models with experimental case studies.
- Introduce advanced material models.
- Create a design methodology for future strain gauge development.
The chosen candidate will be working in the FEA team, which has had an increased amount of investment and great success since the introduction of ANSYS Mechanical. There will also be opportunities to spend time at different international manufacturing sites to fully develop the project.
We will expect to offer further study opportunities (potential EngD), to the successful candidate and the potential to progress onto a lead engineering role in the FEA team for strain gauge R&D.