Transmission technology company Torotrak has appointed Dr Quanbao Zhou as chief engineer, research and development, in the face of what it calls ‘growing demand from clients for engineering application work across a diverse range of market sectors’.
The firm says that Dr Zhou’s experience in friction and parasitic loss reduction will be of particular benefit as Torotrak expands its range of full-toroidal traction drives to include smaller units, suitable for variable-speed supercharger drives, mechanical kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) and other applications where size, cost and efficiency are critical.
For the last 12 years, Dr Zhou has been mainly responsible for low friction engine design, analysis and optimisation at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), including the piston assembly, valvetrain, bearings, oil pump and lubrication system.
Under Dr Zhou’s leadership, JLR’s V8 gasoline engines, developed over the last decade, are among the lowest friction engines to have been independently tested by the German automotive consultancy, FEV.
Commenting upon the appointment, Torotrak’s engineering director, Roger Stone said: “Dr Zhou brings additional experience to enhance our R&D capability and bolsters our background in system development for volume manufacture at a time when customer project work is growing rapidly. We are working with many clients across a diverse range of sectors in which Dr Zhou’s expertise will help to ensure our future technology pipeline delivers further improvements in efficiency and CO2 reduction for our customers.”