Overview
Prospera graduated from the University of South Wales with a BEng in Aeronautical Engineering. After completion of her Bachelors' degree, she began her career as a Graduate Engineer at Zodiac Aerospace (now Safran Seats GB), where she is still employed. During her graduate year, she gained experience across various functions of the aerospace industry such as Composite manufacturing, Mechanical Design, Stress Engineering and Certification. After her graduate year she progressed through Mechanical Design and into Technology Research, where her interests in reducing the carbon footprint of the aerospace industry lead to starting a full-time PhD in Cardiff University, studying direct texturing of metal additive manufactured parts for aircraft interior applications.
Research
Research interests
My current research is focussed on direct texturing of metal additive manufactured (AM) parts for aircraft interior applications. AM is a technique commonly known as 3D printing, where a part is built in a layer by layer manner. The main benefits of AM is that, it minimised the amount of material required to manufacture parts and allows for complex parts to be manufactured. This is particularly interesting in aerospace because by adopting the AM technology, the overall weight of aircrafts can be reduced hence minimizing the carbon footprint of the industry.
The main setback of AM is the surface quality of the as-built surface. For visible aesthetic applications, the as-built surface state can be improved by the used of surface textures. Since the minimum feature sizes, which can be used for producing a surface texture is dependent on the machine and material combination, this size will vary based on machine parameters and the type of material selected. My research is looking into developing a parametric model to allow designers to quickly estimate the machine/material resolution as an alternative to Finite Element Analysis (FEA) or experimentation.
Thesis
Direct Texturing of Metal Additive Manufactured Parts for Aircraft Interior Application
The overall aim of my research is to develop a generic parametric model to enable designers to quickly assess the texturing capability of a metal additive manufacturing (AM) machine and material combination.
Funding source
Safran Seats GB
