06 Jan 2021
Recently, Dr. Bowen Xu from the Department of Civil Engineering succeeded in signing the Technology Development Agreement with the company ‘Shenzhen Landmark Oil & Gas Techn. Co., Ltd’ to work in collaboration on the project ‘Online State-Monitoring Technology of Electric Transformers Based on Vibration Characteristics’ (Total funding: 150,000 RMB, starting from 1st Jan 2021).
The Department of Civil Engineering has been active engaged in multidisciplinary research since its foundation, while also keeping in close connection with industrial companies to enhance the student learning experience and meet the requirements of the development of academic research.
The project, which accords with the vision of the department and the requirements of the industry, aims at providing effective monitoring methods of working states of transformers, which improves the reliability of online electric transformers.
Transformer is one of the most important elements in the electric system, which connects the equipment of different voltage levels. The effective and reliable monitoring method of the working state of online electric transformers, therefore, is of great significance as it guarantees the reliability and safety of the working state of the entire national grid.
Conventional monitoring method considering the reactance information of the transformer requires the transformer to be powered off, which fails to provide information of the online working states. Consequently, the monitoring method based the vibration characteristics of transformers has drawn the attention of researchers in recent years.
On the other hand, since the collection and analysis of vibration signals of transformers require comprehensive and solid multi-disciplinary background of both electric and structural engineering, the available research outcomes in this area are limited and reliable models to simulate the relationship between the working state and vibration characteristics of transformers are still lacking to date.
This project hence aims at proposing effective and reliable numerical models to be applied in predicting the working state of online transformers.
Dr. Bowen Xu gained his PhD in Civil Engineering at Imperial College London in 2019 and joined the Department of Civil Engineering in July 2020 after a year of postdoc research. In addition to the solid research experience of structural and material engineering, Dr. Xu has been working with other electric engineering institutes (i.e. Shenyang University of Technology, China Electric Power Research Institute etc.) aiming at establishing long-term collaboration with industrial companies and providing high value research outcomes in both disciplines.
With the active supports provided by the Department of Civil Engineering, the staff will be further engaged in multidisciplinary research activities and contribute to the development of the department.
Story provided by Department of Civil Engineering
Photos courtesy of Dr Bowen Xu
06 Jan 2021