Advancing UK capabilities

The National Composites Centre, established as part of the Government’s UK Composites Strategy will open its doors in summer 2011, bringing together academics and dynamic companies to develop new technologies for the design and rapid manufacture of high quality composite products. Dr Neil Calder looks at how the project is coming together and what is on offer for UK businesses.

The level of progress being made on the National Composites Centre (NCC) has been impressive in the last 12 months. Originally a very aggressive schedule was set for its development and Peter Chivers, NCC Executive Director, claims this has so far been achieved.

The NCC is hosted by the University of Bristol on behalf of the UK Government, with the university accountable for delivery of the centre through the use of the £25m of grant money coming from the Department for Business Innovation & Skills (£12m), the South West RDA (£4m) and the European Regional Development Fund (£9m). In delivering its objectives, it is supported by a steering board currently consisting of representatives from GKN Aerospace, Vestas, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, and AgustaWestland.

As Chivers explains: “The NCC addresses the issues raised in the UK composites strategy published in November 2009 by helping to build capacity in rapid manufacturing, strengthen the existing network of centres of excellence and support skills development.”

It will provide design and manufacturing facilities at an industrial scale capable of building prototypes to validate design concepts and rapid manufacturing processes; build upon and lead a strengthened network of regional centres of composite excellence; and include a training capability working with public and private sector training providers to provide a learning resource for advanced and specialist composite technologies. In each of these there has been significant and visible activity within the last 12 months.

The building has now been constructed at SPark (the Bristol & Bath Science Park) on the edge of Bristol, and is currently going through its internal fit out phase, soon to be filled with equipment and people. This is on target for a late April completion and handover of the building from the contractors. The original incredibly challenging delivery schedule has been delayed by only a couple of weeks, due to the arctic weather in December.

All the planned equipment for the Centre is specified and on order. By August most of this will be fully operational within the building, except for a few long leadtime items such as a twin robot automatic fibre placement machine from Coriolis Composites. As of January this year the NCC became operational as an organisation when the Composites Structures Development Centre (CSDC) workshop team from Airbus Filton transferred to its books. All the CSDC equipment is transferring from Filton too, including autoclaves, a large gantry router and non-destructive testing machinery. The NCC is spending over £7m on additional equipment and will be offering that capacity to all members, not just the top rank.

Chivers states: “At some 8,500m2 the NCC is the size of a football pitch. This is more like a factory than a research establishment. To give it some tangible scale, it’s an industrial scale establishment consistent with a good sized SME and with state of the art equipment capability configured for parts up to 10m by 3m. For most people, it could make prototypes of any of their products or parts. It’s only the very large parts like aircraft wings and wind turbine blades which would be compromised and even then representative elements could be accommodated. However, although it will have an industrial scale, the Centre is all about capabilities, not products.”

The National Composites Network formally handed over coordination of the five regional composite centres mid-summer last year and the NCC has already established a very good common understanding with all parties very supportive of the relationship. There is a set of commonly agreed objectives and the group is now working on establishing robust methods of delivery. Each of the regional centres has a domain of specialisation and they will all come together with the NCC, to manage UK composite capability in a coherent way, and by minimising gaps and overlaps.

The NCC will focus on providing skills solutions for these emerging and advanced technologies, i.e. upskilling to accommodate new processes where this is part of technology and capability transfer. ‘Composites 101’ training for foundation level skills is already happening through FE colleges and commercial providers throughout the UK and the NCC has no intention of duplicating these existing actions. Instead, the NCC has been working very closely with the National Skills Academy for Process Industries (NSAPI) and is looking for a tight future alliance with the organisation. The NSAPI has just added composites to its portfolio, and Chivers admits that there are further discussions under way which will be presented to the UK composites sector shortly.

“Most new skills delivery will not happen within the walls of the NCC,” continues Chivers, “but it’s a good focal point for concentrating on future skills as future technologies demand new skill sets. We’re also thinking about where we position ourselves as a skills provider. There is a postcode dependency because of the people element and this has formed an aspect of the discussion with the regional centres.”

The South West Regional Development Agency has been involved throughout as integral part of the team as well as in its role as a funding body. The contract for delivering the NCC grant lease from the RDA Strategic Investment Framework funding will be concluded within the March 2012 lifetime of the RDAs, so the NCC is spending money very quickly at the moment. The European Regional Development Fund aspects will continue on a longer timescale.

Chivers concludes by assuring that the NCC is extremely committed to being accessible to all sizes of companies in all sectors. “Anybody can become a member if they want to spend on research and development through the Centre. This is essentially prepaid research time. For tier one members with heavy engagement within the composites sector the numbers will make good sense. This will allow them to participate in and to direct the core research programme. Second tier engagement will enable a lesser degree of directed research and a more ‘pay as you go’ access approach to the Centre’s activities.”

This model for business engagement is not unlike that developed by the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Rotherham. Something new that Chivers is very keen to develop is affiliate membership which doesn’t get the research but puts a company ‘on the list’, which will enable access to knowledge through various modes of communication and will allow these companies to use equipment on a pay as you go basis.

www.nationalcompositescentre.co.uk