Advanced Fatigue & Structural Integrity Engineer; KTP Associate

The responsibilities for this post include:

• Review Leonardo Helicopters’ current fatigue assessment methods, finite element workflows and relevant engineering processes, identifying opportunities for the new methodology to be embedded.
• Develop a detailed understanding of the advanced multiaxial fatigue assessment methods underpinning the project, including the treatment of local stress-gradient effects.
• Perform finite element, stress and fatigue analyses of representative fatigue-critical helicopter components.
• Tailor and further develop specialist fatigue-analysis software for use within Leonardo Helicopters’ engineering environment.
• Integrate the new fatigue assessment capability with existing finite element and digital engineering workflows.
• Apply and validate the methodology through two priority industrial case studies, benchmarking predictions against existing methods and available experimental or service evidence.
• Develop practical engineering procedures, guidance and demonstrator analyses to support routine application of the new methods.
• Work collaboratively with engineers across Fatigue and Damage Tolerance, stress, design, structural testing, materials and project engineering.
• Comprehensively document the methods, software and project outcomes and transfer the resulting knowledge to Leonardo Helicopters staff.
• Produce user guidance and deliver technical training to selected Leonardo engineers and internal champions.
• Manage project activities, milestones, risks and deliverables in collaboration with the industrial and academic supervisors.

As part of an Innovate UK funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between Sheffield Hallam University and Leonardo Helicopters, you’ll lead a project to introduce and embed advanced multiaxial fatigue assessment methods into Leonardo’s structural design and certification activities.

The project will integrate specialist fatigue-analysis approaches with existing finite element workflows to improve the assessment of fatigue-critical helicopter components.

Leonardo Helicopters are a global high-tech company and one of the world’s leading organisations in aerospace, defence and security. Leonardo Helicopters’ Yeovil site is a major UK centre for rotorcraft engineering, design, development, manufacture and support.