Prof Robert Ainsworth

Biography

Bob Ainsworth joined The University of Manchester as BNFL Professor of Structural Integrity in early 2011 after over 35 years in the UK electricity supply industry. There he was heavily involved in development of structural integrity assessment procedures, in particular the defect assessment procedure R6 and the high temperature assessment procedure R5. The central parts of R6 have been included in other procedures: for example, the British Standards document BS7910; the American Petroleum Institute/ASME procedure API/ASME FFS-1; and the European procedures SINTAP in 1999 and FITNET in 2006. The R6 procedures are used routinely in defect assessments on UK nuclear plant and are also used widely outside the nuclear industry. The R5 procedures are the UK power generation industry standard for assessing the lifetime of high temperature components and are also used worldwide. Bob Ainsworth has received a number of awards including being elected a Fellow of The Royal Society in 2009 and of The Royal Academy of Engineering in 2004. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and a Chartered Engineer. As well as being active in research he has been involved in teaching, including giving lectures on the High Temperature Component Life Assessment Course at Imperial College on 15 occasions between 1987 and 2011 and being an invited or keynote speaker at a numerous conferences and seminars.

Research Interest

Engineering