RP is awarded the Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES) Prestigious Engineering Achievement Awards (Applied Research and Development category) during The World Engineers Summit 2021.

Held on 11 November 2021, the IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award recognises individuals and institutions for exceptional accomplishments in engineering. The award was presented by Mr S Iswaran, Minister for Transport and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations. 

The winning project entitled “Replication & Repair of Hot Air Thermal Defects on Composite Aero-Structures” is led by Dr. Hamid Saeedipour, Principal Lecturer from RP School of Engineering (SEG). This project is a collaboration with Associate Professor Kheng Lim Goh from the Newcastle University in Singapore, Dr Lai Wei Liang and Mr Swami Annamalai, who were former research staff with RP SEG.

24 students from RP, Newcastle University in Singapore and SIT/Glasgow University Singapore also participated in the project which spanned over five semesters.

The objective of the project was to replicate and assess in-service thermal damage induced by hot-air on composite aero-structures and to advance in the thermal defect analysis in a high technology readiness level (TRL). Two horizontal and vertical thermal-defect generating machines were designed and fabricated to replicate hot air effects and generate over 200 composite test samples exposed to various high temperatures to simulate composite damage due to hot air in flight. This innovative technique will enable staff in Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul (MRO) centres to find the thermal damage severity and undertake composite repair in a more efficient manner.