The Nobel laureate Lord Porter, former president of the Royal Society, has been quoted saying:
"There are two kinds of research—applied research and not-yet-applied research."
However, as a materials engineer working the the area of applied research in Structural Integrity and in particular creep, fatigue and fracture of engineering alloys for power generation; I am frustrated by the very slow progress of turning fundamental research into general engineering practice.
At EDF Energy we maintain the R5 and R6 structural integrity procedures, which were originally produced in the UK by CEGB (which was a state monopoly electricity generator). These two procedures are internationally recognised and are often used by industry and referenced in research. These two procedures were produced at a time when the CEGB conducted a lot of it's own fundamental research, applied research, supported academic research at Universities and was keen to develop this research into improved engineering methods that could be used to design and for life assessment of real power stations.
While EDF Energy continues to develop and update R5 and R6 what has become frustrating has been the very slow rate at which:
So the question again; how do we speed up the rate by which fundamental research in engineering is taken up into general engineering practice?
Of course in asking this question I shoulder the full responsibility that it is fully my responsibility as an industrial researcher to do all I can to turn fundamental research into applied research. I am of course asking :-
How can I influence the industries, academics, government organisations etc to provide the resources, funding and support to turn great fundamental research into real application?
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