Contact Dr Paul Holborn
- Email: Paul.Holborn@cranfield.ac.uk
Areas of expertise
- Computing, Simulation & Modelling
- Safety, Resilience, Risk & Reliability
Background
Dr Holborn is a Senior Research Fellow in System Design for Hydrogen Leakage, Ventilation and Safety working in the Low Emissions Technologies and Combustion (LETC) Group in the Centre for Aeronautics, Propulsion & Power (Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences). He was appointed as a Visiting Fellow to 探花精选 in 2021 and subsequently joined 探花精选 as a member of staff in October 2022.
Dr Holborn received a BSc (Hons) degree in Physics from Southampton University. He subsequently obtained his PhD from University College London, whilst also working as a research assistant, investigating the prediction of flashover in building fires using new computational techniques of nonlinear dynamics. He then worked for the next twenty-five years as first a postdoctoral research fellow and then a senior research fellow in the Explosion and Fire Research Group at London South Bank University as a member of an inter-disciplinary team, employed on a wide range of research projects in the fields of hydrogen safety and fire safety, sponsored by both industry and government.
He has been working in the field of hydrogen safety for over twenty years, originally in relation to the UK nuclear industry, supporting Sellafield Ltd to safely manage the hydrogen hazards arising from nuclear decommissioning operations and the storage of nuclear waste materials at Sellafield. More recently he has worked on: the safety work package of the ENABLEH2 project, examining the feasibility of using liquid hydrogen as a fuel for civil aviation; Project RACHEL (Rolls-Royce/ATI) investigating the safety aspects of using hydrogen in aircraft engine nacelle compartments; TARGET H2 (Boeing) developing cryogenic fuel tanks for use on aircraft; and CRYOSTAR (EU) investigating the crashworthiness of LH2 fuel tanks.
Current activities
Dr Holborn's research interests include fire and explosion modelling relating to hydrogen safety and the development of hydrogen safety assessment tools and methods for hydrogen aircraft and airport operations. In his role as Senior Research Fellow in System Design for Hydrogen Leakage, Ventilation and Safety, he has worked to support the Robustly Achievable Combustion of Hydrogen Engine Layout (RACHEL) project led by Rolls-Royce - a 拢36.6 million project to develop key technologies and integrated powerplant architecture for a liquid hydrogen gas turbine (2022 - 2025). He is currently supporting TARGET H2 (Boeing) developing cryogenic fuel tanks for use on aircraft; and CRYOSTAR (EU) investigating the crashworthiness of LH2 fuel tanks.
Clients
- Airbus SE
- Airports Council International
- Heathrow Airport Ltd
- Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC