Ned received a BEng in Aeronautical Engineering and a PhD in Engineering from University of Limerick. He is a facutly member in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering within the Faculty of Engineeering. He currently teaches at levels 8 and 9 along with supervising research students at both Masters and PhD levels.
His research interests include erosion of materials by liquid impact, rain erosion of materials, and usage of UAVs for inspection and defect detection. He is currently focused on the erosion of wind turbine blade leading edges and has a number of projects looking at materials and coatings for mitigating erosion damage on wind turbine blades.
Research Interests
Dr. Edmond Tobin completed his BEng in Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Limeirck (2005). He was awarded a PhD by the same institution on the topic ‘Evaluation and correlation of rain eroded aircraft coatings using surface topography’. Dr. Tobin worked as a research assistant and postdoctoral researcher in the area of rain erosion, design of test rigs and equipment, wind turbine monitoring and blade erosion protection and weathering. He was involved in national and international projects such as IComp (Irish Composites Centre), FP7 Project AEROMUCO and Clean Sky Project SAGE3 ALTD .
Dr. Tobin is involved in standards development with ISO committee TC 35/SC 9/WG 32, ASTM standards committee G02 on Wear and Erosion and is a member of Engineers Ireland.
He joined the Department of Aerospace, Mechanical and Electronic Engineering at SETU Carlow in 2015 as Assistant Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering and is a member of the EngCORE research unit.
His research interests involve design of test rigs, rain erosion of aircraft materials, cavitation erosion, erosion resistant coatings and renewable energies (wind turbine blades).
Engagement and Collaboration
Dr. Tobin has worked previously with Bombardier Aerospace, Belfast on aircraft engine nacelle erosion coatings. He has completed research for a number companies in the aircraft and wind turbine sector on protection and resistance of materials to droplet impact.
Current Research Students
Solomon Onwuegbu ‘Screening of wind turbine blade leading edge materials using cavitation erosion’ - principal supervisor
Anthony O’Carrol (University of Limerick) ‘Correlation of Mechanical Properties to Rain Erosion Resistance of Polymeric Materials’ - co-supervisor
Areas of Interest as Supervisor in the future
Erosion protection coatings
Wind turbine blade erosion
Renewable energy systems
Rain erosion of aircraft materials
Tribology
Wear of materials
Liquid – Solid Impact
Laminar flow considerations
Insect contamination of aerospace materials
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
Tobin, EF, Young TM. Analysis of Incubation Period Versus Surface Topographical Parameters in Liquid Droplet Erosion Tests. Materials Performance and Characterization, vol 6, no. 2, pp., 2017. doi:10.1520/MPC20160085
Whelan, M., Tobin, E., Cassidy, J. and Duffy, B. Optimization of Anodic Oxidation of Aluminum for Enhanced Adhesion and Corrosion Properties of Sol-Gel Coatings. Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 163(5), pp.C205- C212, 2016
Tobin EF, Young TM, Raps D, Rohr O, Willemse W, Norman P. Surface topography parameters as a correlation factor for liquid droplet erosion test facilities. Wear, 328–329, pp. 318-328, 2015.
Kok M, Tobin EF, Zikmund P, Raps D, Young TM. Laboratory testing of insect contamination with application to laminar flow technologies, Part I: Variables affecting insect impact dynamics. Aerospace Science and Technology, 39, pp.605-613, 2014
Tobin EF, Young TM, Raps D and Rohr O. Comparison of liquid impingement results from whirling arm and water-jet rain erosion test facilities. Wear, 271, pp. 2625-2631, 2011.
Books and Book Chapters
Kok M, Tobin EF., Zikmund P, Raps D, Young TM. Laboratory Investigation into Anti-contamination Coatings for Mitigating Insect Contamination with Application to Laminar Flow Technologies. In:. Advances in Polymer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2017)
Tobin EF. Cloonan AJ, Young TM. Erosion Resistance. In: Multifunctional Composites by Barbero E (2015)
Conference Proceedings and Papers
Berton B, Courty J-C, Kok M, Tobin E, Young TM. Evaluation of functional coatings for laminar flow applications on future business jets through ground and flight testing. AIAA Flight Testing Conference 2014, Atlanta, USA, 16-20 June 2014. (published)
Tobin EF, Young TM, Raps D. Evaluation and correlation of inter-laboratory results from a rain erosion test campaign. Proceedings of the 28th International Congress of the Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS 2012) Brisbane, Australia, 23-28 September 2012. (published)
Tobin EF, Young TM, Raps D and Rohr O. Comparison of liquid impingement results from whirling arm and water-jet rain erosion test facilities. Proceedings of 18th International Conference on Wear of Materials (WOM 2011), Philadelphia, USA, 3-7 April 2011. (published)
Tobin EF and Young TM. Characterisation tests of a whirling arm rain erosion test facility using aluminium alloy. 5th International Supply on the wings Conference, Frankfurt, Germany, 2–4 November 2010. (published)
Young TM and Tobin EF, Rain erosion testing of composite materials: the design of a laboratory test facility 3rd International Supply on the wings Conference, Frankfurt, Germany, 11-13 November 2008. (published)
