21st October 2022

Having completed all the "smooth"/"un-notched" fatigue tests (its only taken since January!) its been a nice change to start testing notched fatigue specimens.

The data from these notched tests will help test the validity of several longstanding assumptions about how grey cast iron fatigues in the presence of notches, so I'm very excited to start seeing some results!

4th October 2022

Thank you very much to UK Water Industry Research (UKWIR) for inviting myself and my CDT WIRe colleagues to display posters the #UKWIRconference22 last week. It was exciting to learn more about the huge range of work going on to tackle leakage and was a great opportunity to meet people from across the sector.

23rd August 2022

In a milestone moment the bespoke CAT Pumps HTU pump unit recieved a couple of months ago has been run for the first time. I'm pleased to report that this trial run was a success with the pump unit pressurising a pipe speciemen to 200 bar! The next step is to build up the system of valves which will enable us to cycle the water pressure rapidly.

20th July 2022

I had a great time at the WDSA-CCWI 2022 conference in Valencia presenting my work and learning more about what others in the leakage field are working on.

It was nice to share some of my work addressing the problem of how to source as-new cast iron water pipes for destructive testing, overcoming the fact that cast iron water pipes pipes haven't been made since the 1960s. The next step is to use these as-new pipes to investigate how fatigue cracking can cause water loss.

My conference paper titled "Investigating an alternative to exhumed grey cast iron water pipes for small-scale fatigue tests" will be available online before too long.

31st January 2022

The first fatigue test of one of our new grey cast iron pipes has failed, but in a good way! After around 8,000 load cycles the specimen split in two. Around 60 of these tests are required, with a range of loading conditions, to build up a complete picture of how the material responds to complex fatigue load histories.

26th January 2022

Many thanks to Morrisons Water Services for providing a selection of exhumed grey cast iron water pipes. These grubby bits of pipe will be used for destructive testing and provide an exciting insight into the material properties of spun-cast grey iron.