Truly inspirational technology

In the March issue of Composites in Manufacturing, as the research and development work of i-Composites was drawing to a close, we provided an outline of the project. Now that the dust is starting to settle, it is possible to see what has been achieved. Dr Neil Calder reports.
The i-Composites project has delivered technology capability advances at breakneck speed, compressing into 12 months the sort of collaborative technology development programme that would normally take several years to accomplish. On the 20th of July, in its final public action, the project consortium presented the Composites Grand Challenge in Action event at the newly opened National Composites Centre in Bristol.

The programme was a £10 million collaborative research and development project co-funded by the Technology Strategy Board and the programme partners. Lead by GKN Aerospace, there were 22 partners from a wide variety of market sectors, supply chain positions and scales. In the year to 31st March 2011, it had pursued six main, and sometimes overlapping, activity streams in automation, energy reduction, materials, process time reduction, sustainability and simulation. Each of these has now returned enhancements to the capabilities of the consortium members which will also percolate through the UK composites supply chain in the coming months and years as technology capability is fully matured.

Project progress

In one of its subsidiary projects, under the leadership of Bombardier Aerospace, Loop Automation and Kuka constructed a robotic machine for the picking and placement of dry fibre reinforcements into tools for liquid resin infusion processing and which is intended ultimately to be used for the lay-up of aerospace structural components in series production. The novelty of this equipment lies in massively parallel degrees of freedom sensitive enough to perform draping operations under numerical control.

Aircelle has led actions to maximise the energy efficiency of the whole composites manufacturing process. Much of this project activity has been around using energy consumption as one of the metrics for optimisation of the process. The steps it took were to eliminate areas of wasted energy through the entire sequence of manufacturing operations, using microwave curing as the driver. Whilst the basic technology for microwave curing of composites is not totally new, the overall approach was to assess how to make mould tooling compatible with microwaves and how this could be integrated within the composites manufacturing process.

The triangular relationship between material, process and product is especially strong in advanced composites and the work performed by Sigmatex in developing 3D weaving techniques is no exception to this rule. It has been using their modified 5,000-hook jacquard loom with independent control of all the yarns to respond to a need for more efficient use of materials within the manufacturing chain. Its approach has been through productionising the output from the previous ACTS programme which won a JEC Innovation Award in Paris a few months ago. Part of this has involved taking a broad woven tape and cutting it down into smaller strands to be used in less critical applications in, for example, the leisure industry.

ACG has led the ARMATURE project within the i-Composites programme, automating lay-up for an example compression moulded automotive spare wheel well component and making use of the pre-slitted DForm rapid laminating materials technology. At the core of this project was the capability to robotically pick, place and form pre-impregnated preforms of sufficient size and complexity to add value to the end user’s products, utilising an intermediate performing tool and within an aggressive target tact time of one hour.

Within the sustainability theme, benefits were also pursued through the effective use of material within all the subsidiary projects. EPL Composite Solutions has been working with ultra-low viscosity thermoplastics for resin injection. Capability development was around developing a manufacturing process which could rapidly inject a component in seconds rather than in minutes.

Simulation started out as an independent project action, but became a cross-cutting enabling tool for developing a manufacturing processes enabler to other activities. Frazer Nash’s intent was to look at energy savings through microwaving. There were no dramatic breakthroughs in technical capability here, but the work has assisted in the maturation of other parts of the programme.

The overall intention with the i-Composites programme was to accelerate capability maturity across the Technology Readiness Level 3-6 band from basic research to the point of demonstration, and within the 12 month period this has been a challenging goal. Although all of the technology developments covered within the programme are rooted firmly in enhancements to current industrial processes, they are still just one step removed from being totally accessible to the composites value chain and hence they are providing a very useful starting set of projects for the National Composites Centre (NCC), as it represents the current hot topics within the UK.

Coming together

The Grand Challenge project has seen some unlikely couplings, such as Princess Yachts coming together with Bombardier Aerospace to develop manufacturing capabilities that are relevant to both. The momentum generated within the whole programme is very much greater than the sum of its parts. The rationale for doing this as a Grand Challenge was to give everything a push at the same time in collective rather than dispersed actions. The composites value chain in the UK has been described in the past using words like disjointed, dispersed and fragmented. The actions of the i-Composites project have seriously challenged, if not quite yet refuted, this perspective.

The programme was driven by the needs identified in the UK Composites Strategy to strengthen the capability in the UK for advanced composite materials and provide a greater breadth for their application. To do this the programme is providing leadership in the design and manufacture of advanced composite materials by developing the UK skills base to meet the growing demand for composites and facilitating change from more traditional skill sets. The strategy is to build the capacity and capability of the manufacturing base in order to sustain the UK as a global leader in advanced manufacturing. The national composites strategy has survived some very testing times for the Government, including regime change, and it is testament to the ongoing commitment of the UK Government to support it.

Peter Chivers, the head of the National Composites Centre and Richard Newley, GKN’s director for research within its Composites Technology Centre and i-Composites Programme leader, admit that there has been a very synergetic relationship between the programme consortium and the NCC during the programme’s lifetime, not least because many of the key organisations are active in both. In pulling together the consortium, even during the bid phase prior to the programme start, the ongoing close connection between the two leadership teams has included aspects like the sharing of brands, the sharing of exhibition space and reinforcing each other’s role and position in leading the cohesion of the UK’s composites value chain. Outputs from i-Composites have defined the NCC future technology priority areas. The platform created is an excellent way to start off the NCC’s work.

The TSB is now interested in using the Grand Challenge model in other areas of UK industry to stimulate the same sort of coordinated momentum that is evident within the composites sector, nad it is also keen to use this to encourage the SME community to work effectively with the big industrial community.

www.i-composites.org