The proposed research assumes the form of a participatory community arts project which will enable young people from social and culturally diverse backgrounds to represent and share with others their everyday lives through documentary photography. It is grounded in Mass-Observation's documentation of everyday life in the nineteen-thirties and in particular its use of documentary photography and self reflection (through diary-writing) as a means of recording and interpreting working-class lives. This proposal re-visits the Mass-Observation 'Worktown' project in Bolton. This included the production by Humphrey Spender of a documentary photograph archive of people in Bolton engaged in everyday activities such as shopping and working. This unique and under-exploited element of the national Mass Observation archive is held by Bolton Museum and forms the starting point for the project's aim of investigating everyday community life today. The proposed research will focus on young people aged 14-19 of differing social and ethnic backgrounds and use social documentary photography to encourage them to develop their own representations of everyday life in their own communities. It aims to deploy photographic representation to enhance cultural awareness and community cohesion. In this context, community cohesion refers not only to the existence of strong social and cultural relationships between young people of differing ethnic backgrounds but also to relationships between young people and older people. Community cohesion remains an important social and political issue in Bolton as it does nationally. Bolton Council was one of the first local authorities to recognise the importance of building cohesion between its many diverse communities and has implemented a number of initiatives to encourage greater understanding and tolerance between communities.\nThe student will be based at Bolton Museum and will use the Spender Worktown collection as a base from which to enable young people to produce their own photographic record of Bolton in the twenty first century. A number of organisations which work with young people - for example schools, Bolton Connexions and Bolton Lads and Girls Club - will help to create and maintain links between young people and the project. It will seek to facilitate reflection on what 'home' means to them in Bolton today and so draw upon the aspect of MO which captures a sense of place and belonging. However it will differ from Spender's approach as rather than a reliance on a 'professional' photographer, the student will support and enable participants to create their own everyday images of twenty-first century Bolton They will then meet on a regular basis to analyse the resultant images- looking at similarities and differences within their own 'group'. In the final phase of the project the various cohorts of young people will share their images with members of the other groups. In collaboration with Bolton Museum, exhibitions of the photographs will be produced for display within neighbourhood community public venues around the town. This is consistent with other community arts-activity in Bolton and is an aspect of the work which has been welcomed by those organisations collaborating in the research.The student will, through enabling the community impacts outlined immediately above, produce, implement and evaluate a methodology appropriate for social documentary photography projects seeking to engage culturally diverse cohorts of young people in community contexts. Beneficiaries of the research will be the young participants, academic and practitioners working in community arts and Bolton Museum through the enhanced community use of a major yet currently under-used collection. A further outcome will be the enhanced profile of the Humphrey Spender Worktown Collection as a documentary photographic archive with sig

This proposal involves mathematical modelling of the burning and degradation of mechanical properties of flame retadant glass fibre reinforced plastic laminates. At Bolton, novel flame - retardant laminates have been developed and patented during an earlier EPSRC project. These laminates contain novel flame retardant chemicals and inherently flame retardant cellulosic fibres as additives in the resin matrix or as additional fabric layer. Some laminates also contain polymer layered silicate nanocomposites with or without conventional flame retardants. The laminates show improved flame reatrdant and residual mechanical properties after fire/heat exposure compared to unmodified laminates. This proposal is a joint attempt by 'Fire and Heat Resistant Materials' group at Bolton Institute and 'Fire Engineering Research Group' at University of Manchester to numerically predict their burning and mechanical behaviour under a fire condition. The Bolton team will focus on the burning aspect and the Manchester team the burning induced degradation of mechanical properties. Results from the Bolton team will provide input of material damage and temperature information to the Manchester team so that the outcome of this project will be an integrated predictive model for combining both burning and burning-induced mechanical behaviour. A limited amount of mechanical tests at elevated temperatures will be carried out to provide data for validation of the numerical models developed.

Fibre-reinforced composites are finding increased usage in load-bearing structures in a variety of applications in marine, automotive and rail transport industries owing to their specific strength and stiffness properties. A serious problem with these composite materials, particularly glass-reinforced polymeric composites, which are the most prevalent in marine and other surface transport applications, is that they support combustion and in fire conditions burn, most often with heavy soot and smoke. Insulation can reduce the fire hazard, but does not eliminate it. Moreover the insulation adds weight and cost to apply.The combustible part of the composite is organic resin matrix. Most common method of fire retarding the resin and hence, the overall composite is the physical and chemical modification of the resin by either adding fire retardant element in the polymer backbone or using fire retardant additives in the resin. For polyester or vinyl ester resins, usually halogenated chemicals are used. While the presence of halogen significantly reduces the flammability of the resin, due to increasing environmental awareness and strict environmental legislations thereof, halogen - containing fire retardants are being strictly scrutinised. When non-halogen flame retardants are used, invariably they are required in large quantities (>30% w/w) to achieve required level of fire retardancy. The high concentrations of additives however, can reduce the mechanical properties of the composite. Moreover, they also affect resin's processability for resin transfer moulding technique, commonly used for these types of composites. We propose here a step change in the resin matrix by reducing the combustibility of vinyl ester and/or polyester resin by co-blending with inherently fire retardant resins, such as phenolic or melamine-formaldehyde resin.This proposal is a joint attempt by 'Fire Materials' group at the University of Bolton and 'Fluid Structure Interactions Research Group (FSIRG) at the University of Southampton to develop, construct, test and model novel, fire-retardant composites, initially for marine applications. The principal focus is to develop a modified polymeric matrix to reduce the combustibility of the vinyl ester or polyester resins by blending with appropriately modified phenolic and melamine resins, which will increase the thermal stability and char-forming capacity of the matrix. The physical and chemical properties of the modified resin will be optimised to enable: (a) the resin to be infusible for moulding leading to good processing ability: (b) low temperature cure capability to maximize compatibility and bonding with glass fibres; and (c) up-scaling to produce large laminates and structures. It is proposed that two different approaches will be taken: the first one 'Material' based, mainly by Bolton, and the other 'Structure' based, to which both Bolton and Southampton will contribute. The specific tasks include resin blending, chemical / physical modification of the resin, process modelling and resin infusion, composite laminate preparation and flammability evaluation. The composite laminates and structures thus produced are expected to comply with the fire performance requirements contained in the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) as `IMO/HSC Code (Code of Safety for High Speed craft of the International Maritime Organisation). Additionally, the structural performance of the composite would be expected to be comparable with current glass/vinyl ester. We also propose to conduct fire performance modelling, mechanical characterisation and progressive damage analysis from a structural design viewpoint.We expect these composites to find applications also in other engineering arenas for which low-weight, thermally resistant and fire-retardant structures are increasingly being sought.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.