Rafael Ruiz Iglesias a PhD student and CerTest project team member based in the Bristol Composites Institute supervised by Professors Janice Barton and Ole Thomsen, and Dr Geir Olafsson has received the British Society for Strain Measurement (BSSM), Young Stress Analyst prize. The competition is sponsored by Airbus and involves writing a 1000 summary of the applicants project, the project summaries are ranked by a panel of experts in Experimental Mechanics and the top four applicants are invited to present their work at the BSSM Annual Conference. and this year took place in Oxford at St Anne’s college. The competition is open internationally and the other three finalists came from Netherlands, Portugal and UK Industry.
Rafa’s presentation was entitled “Subsurface Damage Assessment in Composite Laminates Using a Novel Full Field Imaging Technique” which is aligned to the EPSRC funded Programme Grant Certification for Design – Reshaping the Testing Pyramid. Each finalist was allowed 15 minutes for their presentation followed by five minutes of intense questioning; there were over 100 delegates in the audience. Rafa’s presentation was extremely visual and engaging, which the judges appreciated and placed his work first.
The outcome of the competition was announced at the conference dinner, which provided a very nice end to the evening with Rafa receiving first prize. Congratulations to Rafa!