Brighton researcher floating in zero gravity

Brighton research team go weightless in latest space research project

A University of Brighton team has carried out a set of experiments flying over France on parabolic flights that create weightless conditions similar to space.

The weightless effect is achieved flying a series of steep upward and downward manoeuvres which can be compared to riding a rollercoaster with a total drop of 3km (10,000 feet)! The flights from Bordeaux’s Novespace centre are carried out by a specially adapted Airbus A310 plane that climbs then plummets in a way which balances gravitational forces to provide a sequence of short periods of weightlessness lasting around 22 seconds – but experienced 31 times each flight.

Working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Liverpool, the team from University of Brighton’s world-renowned Advanced Engineering Centre saw Professor Marco Marengo – a veteran of nearly 20 ‘weightlessness flights’ – working alongside Dr Nicolas Miché (project lead) and PhD student Francois Clemens to test pulsating heat pipes under microgravity conditions, looking at shape changes and capillary action in different arrangements of bent tubes.

Pulsating heat pipes are used to move heat from one place to another without fans or pumps, and can be used to help satellites and space probes stay at the correct temperature in the challenging conditions of space. The new system being tested by the Brighton team involved an innovative flexible form of heat pipe designed to be a forerunner of future flexible electronics, deployable radiators and booms in space operations.

Past experiments carried out by the Brighton team floating above France have looked at how heat pipes of different configurations and materials react and operate in different gravities, with implications both for safety in space as well as the effective conduct of experiments on orbital vehicles such as the International Space Station (ISS).

University of Brighton postgraduates also won the European Space Agency’s student project competition Fly Your Thesis in 2018 – after being the first UK team selected to take part in the long-running programme for 14 years.

Professor Marengo said: “What is important in this kind of flights is doing experiments directly on  set-ups under weightless conditions, which makes this program different to all the other tools for microgravity experiments, such as sounding rockets, drop towers and the ISS.

I have experienced more than 300 parabolas – over 100 minutes with absence of weight. The first time is a surprise, since you have really the impression to fly, to float in the air. It is difficult to get used to this feeling because it lasts only 22 seconds, preceded and followed by a period in hyper gravity, which can be rather heavy to cope with. In the transition between microgravity and hyper gravity, you can also feel dizzy even as frequent 0g flier.”

Novespace is part of the French Space Agency (CNES), and its Airbus A310 ZERO-G is one of the world’s largest parabolic flight aircraft. UK involvement in space has surged in recent years, with rocket bases planned for Scotland and Cornwall, and nearly 45.000 people now employed in the industry.  The UK’s latest National Space Strategy plans to invest more than £6 billion over the next 10 years to strengthen the UK as a world class space nation.  The UK Space Agency provides active support to student and research team access to microgravity platforms such as parabolic flights.

Montage of images as a still from the Fixperts video

Brighton student design teams bag coveted global awards

Two teams of University of Brighton design students have won awards in a prestigious global competition run by the Royal College of Art.
The students – in their first year of Product Design with Professional Experience BSc have won both of the two Royal College of Art, The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design Fixperts awards for 2021. Fixperts is a learning programme that challenges young people to use their imagination and skills to create ingenious solutions to everyday problems for a real person.

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Alexandra Duffy graduation selfie

Loving student and graduate life in Brighton

Alexandra Duffy graduated from our Building Surveying BSc(Hons) in 2018 with first class honours. She’s now working on the Circus Street site in Brighton which is near to completion and set to deliver 142 new homes, 450 student bedrooms and 30,000 sq ft of new office space.

Here Alexandra tells us about her time as student at Brighton and how she came to be working on the Circus Street site, a project that she studied as part of her course!

What made you choose Brighton and this course?

I grew up in Brighton and would not have chosen to do my course anywhere else. I love the city and wanted to be part of the University of Brighton alumni. I originally chose to do a degree in Project Management for Construction, but having shared my first year with other disciplines, I decided a career in Building Surveying was the route I wished to follow.

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A pile of Lego bricks

My time at Lego never felt like work

George Gilliatt, a Product Design student, did a year-long placement with Lego in Denmark. We spoke to him about this experience and his course.

Why did you choose to study product design?

I have three subject-based strengths: design technology, art and film production. Product design was the perfect choice for me because you do all of these three subjects in one. There is a lot of art in drawing out your design ideas and coming up with final renders of a product. And film making is becoming more prevalent in the course eg a big part of our final launch section is to make a Kickstarter video. Plus in second year, we had to come up with a kind of a self-promotion video to send to our placement company of choice. I chose to promote myself to Lego because I’ve been a Lego fan all my life.

Tell us about your placement

My time at Lego never felt like work. I would wake up and actually want to go to work. I would cycle over to the Lego building and spend maybe 12 hours there each day. I felt like I was literally just playing all day long.

The placement itself was split into two sections. In the first four months I was part of a group of six interns working in the prototyping department. We were doing a more traditional product design role, coming up with new Lego bricks or new ways to play with the Lego pieces. It was all very experimental, involving cutting and gluing bits of plastic together and coming up with new things.

By good fortune, Lego then introduced more intern positions within the actual product teams – these are the teams that actually design the products – and they asked me if I wanted to stay on and do another six or seven months.

What’s your proudest moment from your placement?

There were a lot of proud moments. The proudest one of all is having two products I worked on hit the stores in January. Three more I worked on will be released in summer. I can walk to even Sainsbury’s down the road and my products will be on the shelves. I get emotional when I think about this because I’ve been a Lego fan all my life. At my childhood home, my mum’s display cabinets are full of my Lego creations. I never really stopped playing Lego and was still entering Lego competitions at 14 and 15.

But there were lots of smaller proud moments. You were allowed to pitch to the CEO of Lego if he walked around. So, there I was, standing right next to the CEO, pitching my idea to him, and he stood there and listened. He sat down and it was like he was a boy again looking at the model I’d made. That was a special moment. I never felt like an intern when I was there. Everyone treated me as a valuable member of the team. There are even suggestions that they are struggling without me and might like me back…

Did you get support in getting your placement?

Yes, you work on getting a placement throughout the whole of your second year and you also get help throughout from the placement office. They tell you how to make a good CV and do practice interviews, and they speak with you about the type of placement you want to go into. I really wanted to get into film marketing as it’s relevant to product design. So, I applied for jobs at Disney, Warner Brothers and the Discovery Channel. I got interviews and went through various stages but kept being rejected at the last stages. It got to the point where the year was over and I still didn’t have a placement. I was really disheartened. But the placement office keeps working through the summer to try and help you. When the the opening came up with Lego, I thought “might as well give it a go. Nothing to lose”. So, I sent off the video and heard back within literally a matter of days. When I then found out that I had the job, I was so excited that I ran into town hoping to bump into anyone I knew to tell them my exciting news.

Do you recommend doing a placement?

Definitely. I think a placement is invaluable. Everyone in my year did different things. Some went on an Erasmus programme and learnt a lot about working in culturally different environments. Others worked at big companies. Others worked in small companies with just three members on the team. We all had valuable experiences and learnt things about the professional world. You can be told on your course how processes work and how industry works, but there’s nothing like experiencing it for yourself.

 Has your course helped with your employability?

Definitely. I doubt I’d have got the Lego placement without having studied my course. But also, the skills I have learnt on the course have been invaluable. Each year on the course, we design a different product, going through the whole design process of research, ideation, development and launch. All of this proved very useful on my placement year. I can also really see the progression in my own work. Some of our work from first year is still on display in our design studio, which I find a bit embarrassing. I can see how far I’ve come.

Why did you choose University of Brighton?

I went to a lot of other universities on open days to look at their product design departments, and none of them had the same inclusive vibe as here. We have a shared design studio space that’s exclusive to our course. Having this shared space means we all work together and inspire each other. In the final year, you even get your own personal desk in the studio that you’re allowed to personalise. I’ve got a basketball hoop on mine, and when I’m stuck, I sit there and shoot some hoops and have a think. That sense of community and togetherness is a real bonus of the course. Social groups have formed within our year, but we are all friends together. It’s very nice.

How does it feel being back at university after your placement?

When it was getting towards the end of the placement, I suddenly got really nervous about coming back to university. I’ve realised what the real world is like – you can earn lots of money to just play with toys. But I’ve got back into the swing of it and it’s nice to be back in Brighton. I love walking around town and seeing the different architectural and design styles. It’s the perfect inclusive community for creative individuals. I have to confess though that although I’m back in my final year I’m still working on Lego projects in my mind…

Photo of Damilola Ogunbiyi at a lecturn giving a speech

United Nations appoints Brighton graduate

A University of Brighton alumna has been appointed United Nations Special Representative for Sustainable Energy for All.

Damilola Ogunbiyi, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency, has also been selected as Co-Chair of United Nations-Energy which promotes “coherence within the UN family of organisations in the energy field”.

The appointments were announced by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Sustainable Energy for All is an international organisation launched by the then Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, to “help mobilize achievement of universal energy access, improve energy efficiency, and increase the use of renewable energy”.

The University of Brighton awarded Ms Ogunbiyi a Project Management for Construction BSc(Hons) in 2001 and a Project Management for Construction MSc the following year.

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