Professor Huw Williams MA, PhD, CMath, FIMA

Professor Huw Williams

School of Engineering
Honorary Professor of Automotive Engineering

Contact details

Email
h.williams.5@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@TheHuwW
Address
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Huw Williams is an Honorary Professor in Automotive Engineering. He is a very well-known leader in the field of automotive engineering with wide industrial experience and significant contribution to research and development of new vehicle technology. Huw is a Fellow and past Vice President of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications and he is also a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

Prior to leaving JLR to pursue a career as an independent consultant Huw was one of only two people to hold the position of Senior Engineering Specialist (LL5 Senior Manager equivalent) in JLR’s product development organisation.  He has been involved in panel meetings of EPSRC and was a member of the peer review college. He has 32 publications and several invited Keynotes in national conferences.

Huw was recognised by Ford Motor Company by being appointed as one of the ten worldwide members of the office for the Henry Ford Technical Fellow for Quality Engineering and contributed to Ford’s Global Technology Development System and the development of Ford’s Design for Six Sigma Programme. As well as a distinguished career in both management and technical specialist roles Huw trained and practiced as a Six Sigma Black Belt, which led to his certification as a Master Black Belt, where he took the best ever score in the qualifying exam: his projects saved millions of dollars and were praised by Ford’s Vice President, Richard Parry-Jones CBE.

Qualifications

  • Certified Master Black Belt, Ford Motor Co, 2005
  • Certified Black Belt, Ford Motor Co, 2003
  • Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, 2002
  • Fellow of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications, 1994
  • Chartered Mathematician, 1994
  • PhD in Theoretical Mechanics, University of East Anglia, 1983
  • MA, University of Oxford, 1983
  • BA in Mathematics, University of Oxford, 1978

Biography

Huw Williams qualified with a BA degree in Mathematics from the University of Oxford in 1978. He went on to study for a PhD in Theoretical Mechanics at the University of East Anglia, which was followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship in Ice Mechanics. He then took the position of Lecturer in Mathematics at Heriot-Watt University for three years before joining the Research team at Jaguar Cars, where he spent the bulk of his career.

After leaving what was then Jaguar Land Rover in 2009, he became an independent consultant and has worked with automotive companies in Europe, South America, India and China. He has been working with the University of Birmingham since 2018, and has contributed to teaching and research in automotive engineering. He was appointed as an honorary professor by the University in 2019.

Teaching

  • Automotive Engineering

Postgraduate supervision

  • Automotive Engineering

Research

  • Application of multi-objective optimisation to vehicle power trains.
  • Mathematical modelling
  • Mechanics of materials e.g. rubber
  • Vehicle Dynamics

Other activities

  • Vice President of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications 2005-2007

Publications

  • Ji Li, Quan Zhou, Huw Williams, Hongming Xu et al. Dual-loop Online Intelligent Programming for Driver-oriented Predict Energy Management of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles. Paper submitted to Applied Energy
  • Ji Li, Huw Williams, Hongming Xu et al. Back-to-back Competitive Learning Mechanism for Fuzzy Logic based Supervisory Control System of Hybrid Electric Vehicles. Paper submitted to IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
  • Yinglong He, Huw Williams, Hongming Xu et al. Multi-objective optimization for cooperative adaptive cruise control and energy management strategy in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (to be submitted)
  • Yinglong He, Huw Williams, Hongming Xu et al. Many-objective life cycle optimization for plug-in hybrid energy storage systems considering ethanol use and various carbon intensities of electricity (to be submitted)
  • Quan Zhou, Huw Williams, Hongming Xu et al. Multi-step Reinforcement Learning for Model-Free Predictive Energy Management of an Electrified Off-highway Vehicle (to be submitted)
  • Quan Zhou, Huw Williams, Hongming Xu et al. Swarm Intelligence for Simultaneous Optimization of Component Sizing and Energy Management Control of an Off-highway Electrified Vehicle, paper in preparation
  • Quan Zhou, Huw Williams, Hongming Xu et al. Swarm Intelligent Design Optimisation of a Hydraulic-electromagnetic Energy-harvesting Shock Absorber for Electrified Vehicles, paper in preparation.
  • Yildirim, Unal, Felician Campean, and Huw Williams. "Function modeling using the system state flow diagram." AI EDAM 31.4 (2017) 413-435
  • Campean, Felician, Edwin Henshall, Unal Yildirim, Amad Uddin, and Huw Williams. "A structured approach for function based decomposition of complex multi-disciplinary systems." In Smart Product Engineering, pp. 113-123. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, (2013)
  • Whear R and Williams HT, Advanced Hydraulically Damped Component Models, SAE paper 05AC – 169 (2005)
  • Williams HT and Whear R, Elastomer Models for Virtual Mounting Systems, SAE paper 05AC – 168 (2005)
  • Knops RJ, Trimarco C and Williams HT, Uniqueness and Complementary Energy in Nonlinear Elastostatics, Meccanica 38(5) (2003) 519-534
  • Xu, H, Fu, H, Williams, HT, Shilling, I, Modelling study of combustion and gas exchange in a HCCI (CAI) engine, SAE paper 2002-01-0114 (2002)
  • Coveney VA, Jamil S, Johnson DE, Keavey MA, Menger C and Williams HT, Implementation in FEA of a Triboelastic Law for Dynamic Behaviour of Filled Elastomers, Finite Element Analysis of Elastomers, Boast D and Coveney VA (eds), Professional Engineering Publishing, London (1998)
  • Coveney VA, Jamil S, Johnson DE, Keavey MA, Menger C and Williams HT, Rate Dependent Triboelastic and Other Models for Elastomers and Prospects for Imlementation in FEA, Finite Element Analysis of Elastomers, Boast D and Coveney VA (eds), Professional Engineering Publishing, London (1998)
  • Williams HT, Jamil S and Coveney VA, Novel Hyperelastic Constitutive Laws for Elastomers, Finite Element Analysis of Elastomers, Boast D and Coveney VA (eds), Professional Engineering Publishing, London (1998)
  • Quintanilla R and Williams HT, An Existence and Uniqueness Theorem for Incremental Viscoelasticity, Quarterly of Applied Mathematics XLIII, 3 (1985) 287-294
  • Williams HT, Single Integral Representations in Ice Mechanics, Cold Regions Science and Technology,  9 (1984) 89-95