Young Scientist award for ECS researcher

David Swaffield, research assistant in the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory has been awarded the 2005) Eric.O.Forster Young Scientist Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE. David received his award at the IEEE International Conference on Dielectric Liquids at Coimbra, from Robert Hebner, President of the IEEE’s Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS). It was based on a paper entitled “Partial discharge characterisation in liquid nitrogen composite systemsâ€? by D J Swaffield, P L Lewin, Y Tian, G Chen and S G Swingler. David has recently completed a doctoral thesis on the future use of liquid nitrogen as an electrical insulation for superconducting power apparatus under the supervision of Dr Paul Lewin and Dr George Chen. The Electrical Power Engineering Research Group in ECS has a long established reputation for its research into the potential application of high temperature superconductivity (HTS) to power plant. David’s research was funded by the EPSRC and concerned design issues relating to the development of terminations for a HTS high voltage cable. ‘Where Liquid Nitrogen is used both for electrical insulation as well as temperature control, it is important that its electrical properties are well understood because this will inevitably lead to optimised designs of future HTS high voltage plant’ said Dr Lewin. David has measured partial discharge activity in liquid nitrogen and for the first time has obtained images that relate to the actual discharge event. Based on David’s publications in this area he has also been invited to be a panellist, representing the UK cryogenic dielectric research community, at the First Cryodielectrics Workshop to be held as part of the IEEE 2005 Conference on Electrical Insulation and Dielectric Performance