Dr Kim Blackburn
Research Fellow in Off Road Dynamics
Location: Building 61, Cranfield campus
E: k.blackburn@cranfield.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)1234 750111 x2834
Environmental Science and Technology
Current activities
Dr Kim Blackburn's current research is focussed in two parallel areas of off-road vehicle dynamics and traction and agricultural engineering as applied to harvesting and processing novel agricultural crops, tillage and drainage.
Work in off-road vehicle performance and traction has originated from development of novel instrumentation to measure and gain understanding of fundamental processes at the tyre-soil interface in order to describe and enhance vehicle performance. This has progressed through a number of projects with commercial clients and co-supervision of research students.
In recent years he has been the technical lead for key equipment for the off-road vehicle dynamics facility, project managing the £300k dynamic single-wheel tester and smart winch, producing all software, data acquisition and hydraulic control for the 4-wheel vehicle articulation plate.
Software engineering, applying a variety of tools to develop test equipment, methodologies and extract knowledge from test data form a major part of ongoing research and day to day work.
More general engineering skills have been employed on research and machine development for harvesting and processing novel crops, especially lavender, strawberries and the feed of straw for paper pulp. Other work has covered agricultural economics, devices and systems for measuring turf tensile strength, water balance of drained football fields, soil pressure and stress distributions from human and vehicle loads and current work on traceability systems for agrochemical application and farm produce.
Clients
- Land Rover
- Scania
- Several major tyre companies
- QinetiQ
- Bioregional
Background
Dr Kim Blackburn graduated in Mechanical Engineering from Reading University. Subusequently he moved to Cranfield University for a PhD programme. Following this work in 2002 he joined the staff at Cranfield as a Research Officer. He has been active in local activities of engineering institutions and is working towards Charted status.
Prior to Cranfield, Kim has had a diverse involvement with aspects of engineering from agricultural steam engines to working in IT consultancy producing web based systems.
Selected publications
- I T James, S J Dixon, D W K Blackburn, N Pettican. The measurement of applied pressure at depth within two natural soil surfaces of different densities. Accepted for 6th International Conference, International Sports Engineering Association', Munich, June 2006.
- A J McLeod, I T James, D W K Blackburn. A novel quantitative method for the determination of wear in an installed synthetic turf system. Accepted for 6th International Conference, International Sports Engineering Association', Munich, June 2006.
- Dresser, M.L, Blackburn, D.W.K, Stranks, S, Godwin, R.J. Pressure on buried objects resulting from agricultural operations. Accepted for ISTRO conference, Kiel, August 2006.
