Thurning Instruments' Principal Consultants

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consultant engineers

PRINCIPAL CONSULTANTS

Managing Director:

R J Fortescue

Technical Director:

T R Fortescue

MANAGING DIRECTOR

R. J. FORTESCUE BSc (Hons), CEng, MIMechE

Design and Engineering Roles at Thurning Instruments Ltd:

Mechanical design: instrument housings, systems, mechanisms. Design for manufacture: selection of materials, finishes and manufacturing methods. Design for compliance with IRR99 and Machineries Directive standards.

Electrical and control systems design: categorisation and design of interlocks, PLC programming (ladder logic) and panel design, design to EMC, LVD and Machineries Directive standards.

Electronic design: special purpose control units (safety related controls), low power electronics, embedded controllers including PIC and 8051/ (and derivatives e.g. TI MSC1210), firmware including PIC assembler and KEIL 'C'.

Radiometric design: radiation physics, radiation shielding and gauging systems design.

Software development: PC based software in Visual Basic, serial communications, user interfaces, data logging.

Commissioning, testing and operator training.

Previous Experience:

THORP project, BNFL Sellafield

I was initially a commissioning engineer and later in operations, managing a shift on the Head End Chemical Plant. I worked on the plant from the late stages of construction and installation through to the early stages of production, reprocessing spent thermal oxide fuel.

During the commissioning stages I worked on an area of highly automated mechanical handling plant, principally in a project engineering role. I was responsible for construction site safety within this area and for the work of a site based commissioning team.
As the plant went operational I transferred to the operations team for the "Head End Chemical Plant" where I managed a shift of plant operators. Once spent fuel had been introduced into the plant I was responsible for conventional and radiological safety for my shift and for the operation of a substantial area of plant.

Design Branch, UKAEA, AEE Winfrith

I started out doing design and analysis then moved on to project engineering and finally computer modelling in support of the SGHWR safety case.

I did finite element stress analysis, "manual" stressing, radiation shielding design, pipework and ventilation systems, project engineering and thermohydraulic modelling using RELAP5/MOD2.

e-mail: rfortescue@thurning-instruments.co.uk

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

T. R. FORTESCUE MA, MSc, DIC, CEng, MIEE

Design and Engineering Roles at Thurning Instruments Ltd:

Electronics design: low noise analogue electronics, filters, power supplies (including design of magnetic components), analogue and digital control systems, digital filtering, data acquisition and logging systems. Embedded design and firmware using PIC, C166/7and ST10 (Keil development tools). FPGA design using XYLINX. Development of special measurement techniques, medical electronic systems, current mode and energy dispersive radiation detectors. Design to EMC, LVD and medical standards (e.g. EN60601).

Electronic consultancy: noise auditing, diagnosing and solving noise and stability problems in high-performance amplifiers, power supply design, interpretation and application of standards, collaborative design projects.

Advanced Control: Kalman Filtering and Non-linear Optimisation techniques.

Technology Transfer: technical supervision and training of clients' staff, introduction of advanced control techniques, advanced analogue design and research services.

Radiometric design: radiation physics, shielding and gauging systems design.

Software development: PC based software in Visual Basic, serial communications, user interfaces, data logging.

Previous Experience:

Joint Research Centre Euratom, Ispra, Italy

Instrumentation of the LOBI 1/700 scale reactor safety research loop. Design and modification of thermohydraulic instrumentation, including gamma-ray absorption fluid densitometers. Secretary of EC working groups on both Blowdown and Special Transients experimental programmes for LOBI.

Imperial College of Science and Technology, Dept. of Chemical Engineering

Postgraduate research on on-line stochastic estimation, and self-tuning and adaptive control. Implementation and investigation of performance of Kalman Filtering estimation procedures and of self-tuning control algorithms on large-scale pilot plant. Lecturer on Computerised Process Control.

I.C.I. Dyestuffs Division, Blackley, Manchester

Process instrumentation and control. Application of distributed computer control, to Chemical plant including both DDC and sequence control.

Solartron Electronic Group, Farnborough. (Schlumberger)

Analogue circuit design for sub microvolt resolution digital voltmeters.

e-mail: trf@ndirect.co.uk

A test rig for gamma density measurements on geological drill core samples.

PROJECTS THAT WE HAVE UNDERTAKEN

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Last updated 06-02-2004

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