Top scholarship for heavy vehicle researcher
university-of-waikato
Thu Sep 10 2009 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Top scholarship for heavy vehicle researcher
Thursday, 10 September 2009, 2:44 pm
Press Release: University of Waikato
Media Release
September 10, 2009
Top scholarship for Waikato heavy vehicle researcher
A research proposal to develop energy-efficient heavy vehicles has won a University of Waikato engineering student a prestigious Top Achiever’s Doctoral Scholarship.
Whitianga man Leon Henderson will receive $253,000 over three years, enabling him to work alongside top researchers at Cambridge University on a project to develop a regenerative braking system for large trucks.
The government-funded scholarship is one of 14 awarded this year to the most promising PhD students in New Zealand. Five Waikato students are among the recipients.
Henderson will be working with Professor David Cebon at the Cambridge Vehicle Dynamics Consortium, which brings together manufacturers from the heavy truck industry with engineers from Cambridge University to develop safer and more 'road-friendly' heavy vehicles.
The former Mercury Bay Area School student has already been awarded a William Georgetti scholarship worth $90,000, one of six awarded each year for post-graduate study in a field that will benefit the social, cultural and economic development of New Zealand.
Henderson says his research will focus on saving energy. "At the moment heavy vehicles waste a lot of energy through braking, particularly when driving through towns where there's a lot of stopping and starting. With regenerative braking you can capture some of that energy and reinject it when the vehicle starts up again."
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He says this braking system is already used in electric and hybrid cars to conserve energy, but it's not commonly used for larger trucks because they have more wheels. Developing a regenerative braking system for heavy vehicles could, he says, achieve potential savings in fuel costs of 20-30%. "It also means we could use bigger trucks and trailers around cities, so we won't need so many big vehicles on the roads."
Henderson says the scholarships have made it possible for him to embark on his PhD. “It simply wouldn’t have been feasible for me to self-fund post-graduate study.” He leaves for Cambridge next week.
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