Dr Jim Gilbert BSc, PhD, MIET, MIEEE, CEng

Senior Lecturer

Email:

Phone: +44 1482 466379

Web: http://www.hull.ac.uk/EDTM/

Research Interests

• Pervasive Electronics
• Sensor Networks
• Electronic Manufacturing Processes
• Design for Manufacture in Electronics
• Robot and Nonlinear System Control

Electronics is increasingly becoming pervasive and this brings with it challenges such as communications, power generation and usage, fault tolerance and robustness. Research in this area has particularly focused on energy scavenging - extraction of energy from ambient fields or motion.

Similar issues are important in work on sensor networks in which groups of simple sensing elements communicate with one another to fuse sensor data to achieve more complete information than can be gained form single sensors. Work on sensor networks is aimed at smart buildings and environmental sensing.

Current work in design for manufacture of electronics is considering the development of tools to integrate electronic system design with board level manufacture. In particular the suitability of Conformability Analysis for predicting electronics design, manufacture and test capability is being studied.

Research in electronics manufacture has included extensive work on the use of lasers for soldering of circuit assemblies, from flip chip to through hole connectors. More recent work has concentrated on the use of lasers for via formation in lithographically printed substrates. Two methods have been developed, one using matrix assisted pulsed laser deposition and the second using substrate evaporation. Both of these methods are more compatible with lithographically printed substrate than conventional methods.

Control work has focused on the use of nonlinear control for robotic applications and on the control of flexible drive mechanisms, including the development of a switched mode, variable ratio gearbox

Selected Publications

'Circuit Design Optimisation based on Quality Cost Estimation' Quality and Reliability Engineering International, Vol. 21, Issue. 4, June 2005, pp: 367-386. (with I. M. Bell and D. R. Johnson)

Conformability Analysis Based Test Quality Cost Estimation Int. Mixed Signal Test Workshop Seville 2003 (with D.R. Johnson & I.M. Bell)

'Numerical Modelling of Scanned Beam Laser Soldering of Fine Pitch Packages' Soldering and Surface Mount Technology Journal, Vol 14, No 1, pp24-29, 2002 (with P.M. Beckett, A.R. Fleming & D.G. Whitehead).

'Finite Element Modelling of Laser Soldering' International Journal of Numerical Modelling - Int J Numerical Modelling, Vol 15, No 3, May 2002 (with P.M. Beckett, A.R. Fleming & D.G. Whitehead).

'H Control of a Gravity Gradient Stabilised Satellite' IFAC Control Engineering Practice Vol 8, No 9, pp. 975-983, 2000 (with A. Skullestad).