Material pioneers

material-pioneers
material-pioneers

How did the UK composites sector get to where it is today and what factors have shaped what we have now? Dr Neil Calder looks at just how far we've come.

How did the UK composites sector get to where it is today and what factors have shaped what we have now? Dr Neil Calder looks at just how far we’ve come.

In thinking about the origins of man-made composites it can be difficult to know where to start. It is very easy to get tangled up in descriptions of Assyrian composite bows from c.1800BC using laminated wood, horn and animal sinews within a resin matrix and what can justifiably be classified ‘ceramic composites’ using straw in bricks from biblical times.

A credible starting point for the UK advanced composites sector, however, is the first fibre reinforced plastic, Gordon Aerolite. This was a flax reinforced phenolic resin composite produced by Aero Research Ltd in 1937 and from which a Spitfire fuselage demonstrator was made. The resulting material was half the specific density of sheet duralumin (now known to most of us as 2000 series aluminium alloys) which was the principal airframe structural material of that time – a time when ‘plastic’ generally meant Bakelite and was regarded as inferior to more traditional engineering materials. Aero Research Ltd was acquired by Ciba-Geigy in the 1960’s and the composites division became part of Hexcel in 1996 – still operating 75 years later at the original Duxford site.

In high performance composites, the early work on carbon fibres was investigating alternative manufacturing routes for high performance structures. This work, at the Royal Aeronautical Establishment by William Watt and his colleagues in the 1960s, pioneered the decomposition of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor filaments into continuous fibres of elemental carbon which were virtually free from physical defects. The cost of these early materials was prohibitive for all but the most demanding of applications and the failure in 1971 to develop a viable solution for the Rolls-Royce RB211 fan structure drove these naturally into the defence field. Products made from these materials were virtually handmade. A high degree of manual intervention was used in all stages of manufacture from raw material to finished article, and the first era of high performance composites was consequently shaped by this reliance on human input.

It is interesting also to look at the vertical integration which has existed within the composites value chain. The early pioneers had to figure it all out for themselves, with in-house solutions for reinforcement and matrix material, process, tooling, design, production, testing, and quality, writing the rule book as they went along. This is where the British tradition of inventiveness really came into play. As Sir Ernest Rutherford (actually a New Zealander, but working in Cambridge) ably described in his early work splitting the atom: “we don’t have the money, so we have to think.” This is somewhat at odds with the way things have happened in the US where the Department of Defence has spent some decades throwing billions of dollars at its composites industrial capability. The importance of communication

This characteristic of the UK sector gave rise to a lot of home grown solutions and has done nothing to dispel the image of composites as a ‘black art’. There have been a wide range of standards involved in the sector – one of the key tasks of recent times has been to try to untangle the situation which has given rise to some materials suppliers supplying the same material to different business units of the same customer under different specifications. I have frequently described composites as a partnership-rich environment and this holds true as supply chains are teased apart by niche specialisations.

As a result, the sector is emerging from an environment of a patchwork of cottage industries. The first wave of production scale-up and large scale industrialisation of composites has, as a rule, passed the UK by but now we can look to a future where we can leapfrog this in the new context of automation, digital manufacturing, and a high quality agile or mass customisation environment.

Compared to the rest of the world, the UK has been influenced more by the work of enthusiastic amateurs than industrially minded professionals and this has carried on to today: the really high volume work is generally carried out elsewhere in the world. Most individual sectors or application areas have seen S-curve activity profiles with exponential growth and saturation phases. The few lone enthusiasts in the early days have generally been proven correct. Sector-specific developments

In the aerospace sector, military users have driven the development of composites harder and more deliberately than have civil. The route to the current capability has involved highlights like the carbon fibre wing demonstrators for Jaguar and Grippen which led to the Typhoon and F-35 capability, and incremental development towards the Taranis UAV airframe. When it came to creating composite parts for the Airbus A380, A400M and A350 wings it is notable that the larger components are generally being manufactured in non-UK parts of the Airbus supply chain and, apart from the spars that GKN produces, not where their metal counterparts have previously been made.

In the creation of motorsport structures, most notably for F1 teams, the UK has developed a definite world lead from what was undeniably a pole position. This plays to the strengths of UK manufacturing with that element of intensive engineering and high agility characterised by many of the leading manufacturers in the M4 corridor, nicknamed ‘Motorsport Valley’. In relatively recent times, when carbon fibre reinforced composites have become the material of choice for racing car bodies occupying something like 80% of the volume of these vehicles, these companies have gathered all the parts of their value chains around them. Marine marvels

An indicator for the progression of the UK’s composites capability can be seen in the development of National 12 sailing dinghies which have evolved over roughly the same period since the plastic Spitfire fuselage, from clinker built wooden hulls when the class was launched in 1936 to foam cored carbon composite structures now. Hull weights have almost halved in that time.

Another maritime landmark along the way was the production in 2002 by VT Halmatic of the record breaking 90 metre composite mast for the 75 metre hull of Mirabelle V. This company also produced the E-glass and epoxy ACAVP AFV hull. Experience in liquid infusion processes borne out of handling large (and sometimes very large!) structures has provided this capability. The cluster of similar capability around the South Coast has enabled the creation of the Vestas global technology centre on the Isle of Wight, specialising in large turbine blade manufacture.

It is very difficult to classify the UK university capability as this has evolved according to specialisation and application area. Notable capability exists in Portsmouth relating to marine applications, Bristol relating to aerospace applications and Imperial College relating to polymer engineering. This is by no means an exhaustive list but it does give a flavour for this aspect of the UK composites landscape.

In terms of capability, every link in the composites value chain is covered at some point in the UK, sometimes with some very good niche players. Because of the lack of high volume work, the one notable absence is an indigenous manufacturer of high specification carbon fibres. This was highlighted in a BIS study last year published just prior to the Government’s UK composites strategy.

The composites industry in the UK is valued at around £1.5bn, although quantification has proven difficult owing to the fragmented nature of the whole sector. The next decades of composite history look set to be written by the renewable energy and transport sectors, in much higher quantities and product volumes than have gone before. The challenge will be in maintaining the holistic capability necessary for high agility when new entrants, either individuals or companies, do not have the broad capabilities that the pioneers had to possess.

On this final note, many of the pioneers from the early developments of materials, processes and applications are still active. In the UK the landscape is predominantly either smaller companies or SME-sized business units of larger groups. The whole is a bit discordant still, but we can look to the physical presence of institutions such as the new National Composites Centre, part of the UK composites strategy, to provide a bit more substance to the core of the industry sector.

www.engineeredcapabilities.co.uk

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