Contact Professor Athanasios Kolios

Areas of expertise

  • Computing, Simulation & Modelling
  • Design, Strategy & Innovation
  • Energy Asset Management
  • Oil and Gas
  • Renewable Energy
  • Safety, Resilience, Risk & Reliability
  • Structures and Materials

Background

Dr Athanasios Kolios (Dip Eng, MSc, PhD, MBA, PGCAP, CEng MIMechE, FHEA) is a Reader in Risk Management and Reliability Engineering and Head of Offshore Energy Engineering Centre at Cranfield University. During his academic career he has participated in several projects related to the development, analysis and optimisation of energy systems through a balanced portfolio of research council funded, industry sponsored and specialist consultancy projects of value exceeding £14.6m as PI/co-PI/co-I.

He has participated from the onset (2012) in the development of the largest Joint Industry Projects related to Offshore Wind, called SLIC (Structural Lifecycle Industry Collaboration), with the participation of ten wind farm developers/operators, the support of two certification authorities and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), from the initial scoping study, to leading the pre-testing phase and managing the delivery of the main scope of the project which refers to the development of updated S-N curves specific for offshore wind support structures. In 2014, Dr Kolios was awarded an EPSRC Grant as PI to perform research on the structural integrity and reliability assessment of marine energy technologies and a grant in 2016 through the EPSRC Supergen wind hub to develop a framework for the extrapolation of integrity assessment from instrumented to non-instrumented units across a farm. In 2017, he has been awarded another grant from the EPSRC Supergen wind hub to develop an open access O&M tool for floating offshore wind farms. Dr Kolios has been the PI and technical lead for the ELECTRA project, funded by the DECC through Aerogenerator Power Limited (APL) for the development of a novel Vertical Axis Wind Turbine, with the aim of scaling up the concept to the MW scale. He is also a co-investigator on the recently awarded H2020-ROMEO project aiming to develop reliable O&M decision tools and strategies for high LCoE reduction on offshore wind as well as the EPSRC INNO-MPP (2017) project investigating challenges of floating support structures. Dr Kolios has been a co-investigator on a research project funded from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the development of a high reliability, energy self-sustainable domestic, sanitation system. Further, he is associated with the EPSRC Renewable Energy Marine Structures (REMS) CDT (2014). He has completed several consultancy projects within the Energy industry.

Dr Kolios has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, acts as a reviewer in key journals and has chaired sessions on the Risk and Integrity Management of Energy Assets. He is currently the editor of Elsevier's book on decommissioning and service life extension of offshore wind farms. He is a member of the board of the European Academy of Wind Energy and a member of the ISSC Offshore Renewable Energy Committee. He leads the Risk and Reliability Engineering module and the specialist energy part of the Energy MBA course, a collaboration between Cranfield Energy & Power and School of Management. Dr Kolios is a Chartered Engineer of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has supervised several MSc and PhD students through to completion.

Current activities

Quantitative methods in engineering, decision making and risk management

Performance/Risk based design, analysis and operational management of offshore/marine energy assets

Reliability analysis using non-intrusive stochastic expansions, optimisation of FEA methods

Integrity assessment of ageing structures

Development and optimisation of Renewable Energy Technologies and Life Cycle Assessment

Development, application and calibration of design standards.

Clients

AeroGenerator Power Ltd

ALSTOM Wind

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Centrica Energy

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

European Commission

Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

RWE

Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng)

Structural Lifecycle Industry Collaboration (SLIC) (joint industry project)

Supergen wind

TechniControl/ EcoPetrol

The Carbon Trust

Publications

Articles In Journals

Conference Papers

Books