Producing the tooling used to form sheet metal into car body parts is among the greatest costs of introducing new car models to market. Tools have become heavier and larger over the past 30 years, as production engineers have sought to use tooling stiffness to control any variation in properties of incoming workpieces, and the tooling required to form a 5kg panel may now weigh up to 100 tonnes. This drives cost and also limits press cycle times. This PhD project therefore aims to explore the options to reduce tool mass by better design of existing systems, or by the introduction of new actuation to compensate for reduced stiffness  and offers the opportunity to develop underlying theory to support future exchange between actuation and stiffness in other applications.

This project is wholly funded by Jaguar Land Rover and will involve close collaboration with the company to ensure that the research leads to practical implementation wherever possible. Because of the structure of fees charged by the University, the funding for the position is sufficient only for candidates who are UK or EU nationals. The studentship will cover both university and college fees in Cambridge, and provides a maintenance grant at the EPSRC CASE award level, currently £16,726 per year.

The successful candidate will become a member of the UK INDEMAND Centre (www.ukindemand.ac.uk). This is one of six national End Use Energy Demand Centres created by the government as part of its energy efficiency strategy, and aims to deliver significant reductions in the energy and materials used by industry to deliver goods to UK consumers. The Centre comprises about 20 post-doctoral researchers and a growing cohort of PhD students across four universities. This PhD project will be located in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, and the student will be supervised by the Centre Director, Professor Julian Allwood.

Applicants for the position must meet the University's entry criteria, including a relevant first degree equivalent to a 2-i or better from a good UK university.

To apply, please complete form CHRIS /6 (cover sheet for C.V.s) available athttp://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/forms/ and send it with your C.V. and a covering letter explaining your interest in the position to: Mrs Kirsten Helene Saward, Department of Engineering, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1PZ, (Tel +44 01223 748561, Fax +44 01223 332662, emailkhs29<στο>cam.ac.uk) to arrive no later than 27th February 2015.

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