Tim Harrison is a Senior Research Associate in the Control Systems Research Group with in the School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering.  His current work is in the field of railway track switching, working across several projects; Repoint, In2Rail and S-code.

Tim began his career in Aerospace Engineering as an undergraduate apprentice with British Aerospace.  Having gained his master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering Tim remained in the academic world and undertook a PhD in High Lift Aerodynamics with the support of Airbus UK.

Tim then joined Airbus working on the in-service support of the Landing Gear and Fuel systems of Airbus aircraft across the globe.  Continuing in the aircraft systems field, Tim moved to Morson Projects, working for clients including Airbus, Dassault, Goodrich and Heroux-Devtek.  This was followed by a period working in Research and Development at Rolls-Royce in Derby.

Returning the academia, Tim spent time in the Transport Collision Research Group at Loughborough, before joining the Control Systems Research Group.

Qualifications

• PhD in High Lift Aerodynamics (University of Manchester 2006)
• M.Eng Aerospace Engineering (UMIST 1999)

Tim is the Engineering Lead on the Repoint project.

Repoint (Redundantly Engineering Points) aims to build fault tolerance into railway track switching.  Current point actuation technology is essentially single point of failure, and when that first failure occurs, trains are stopped until repairs can be made.  Repoint aims to improve reliability by including both redundancy, and maintenance by line replaceable unit, in a new point machine system.  The current phase of the project is to build on the existing lab demonstrator and develop a full-scale prototype and test this in track and under traffic.  Repoint is funded by RSSB and supported by Network Rail and London Underground.

Tim also contributes to In2Rail and S-code, both of which are EU funded programmes, through which Loughborough University is contributing to the development of point machines and railway track switching into the future.

Repoint: www.repointswitch.com

In2Rail: http://www.in2rail.eu/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-harrison-8021b233/