Getting extreme materials ready for real-world use
How NCC is helping to industrialise high performance ceramic matrix composites for flight, defence and energy systems
Some applications don’t just stretch the limits of existing materials - they break them.
Next-generation propulsion and thermal protection technologies are pushing operating temperatures from 1000°C to 3000°C. The materials needed to survive those environments must resist thermal shock, aggressive atmospheres and mechanical stress, while still being manufacturable in complex forms.
Ceramic Matrix Composites are amongst the few material systems with that potential. But like many advanced materials, they’ve struggled to move beyond lab-scale trials. Manufacturing is difficult, expensive, and often limited to small, simple parts.
Building on the NCC’s established expertise in polymer composites, significant investment has been made in Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC) research and development capability to support UK industry in the challenge of meeting the demanding performance requirements of future applications.
The challenge: performance without manufacturability isn’t enough
CMCs combine the strength and damage tolerance of advanced fibre composites with ceramic phases that can survive extreme heat. The underlying material science is sound - but adoption has been slow.
Conventional routes to making CMC parts are time-consuming, hard to scale and rarely practical for production. Size limits, processing constraints and high costs have kept these materials out of reach for most end users.
For the UK to both develop and use these materials at component scale - whether in defence systems or next-gen energy - new formulations, processes and infrastructure were needed.
What’s being done
A dedicated specialist team, embedded within the NCC’s 500-strong engineering community and supported by over £200 million of capital investment, has been established to work with industry partners to translate their high-performance CMC concepts into fully functional components.
This capability is delivered through:
- The development of sovereign CMC material systems, enabling exploitation and enhancing supply chain resilience within the UK.
- The creation of scalable manufacturing routes capable of producing increasingly complex geometries and larger structural components.
- The establishment of open access, integrated, in-house capability spanning material formulation through to final processing and validation.
Tapping into the NCC’s advanced manufacturing capabilities, the team have produced semi-complex demonstrator components for non-oxide systems through to full scale integrated engine components for oxides. The team has validated novel processing routes, demonstrated cost reductions of up to 50% relative to conventional non-oxide CMC manufacturing, and established scalable pathways for producing larger, more complex geometries. This knowledge, capability and infrastructure is now being made available to the UK manufacturing sector, showing how partnering with NCC can grow their own CMC value streams.
Why it matters
The result is a manufacturing pathway for industrial adoption of CMC’s.
- New materials systems have been proven under high heat and thermal stress
- End-to-end production of demonstrator parts
- Manufacturing methods are scalable, addressing one of the major blockers to adoption
- Developed cost-reduction process and manufacturing routes
- The UK now has infrastructure and collaborations for oxide and non-oxide CMC processing at component scale
- The formation of UK CMC industrialisation pathways
For defence, this supports urgent demand across all platforms. For aerospace and energy, it opens new possibilities in propulsion and re-entry systems. And for UK materials strategy, it’s a step towards reducing reliance on overseas technology whilst being able to export cutting edge engineering solutions internationally.
The bigger picture
Materials like CMCs won’t replace conventional systems - they’re not meant to. But where operating environments leave no other option, they offer a credible route forward. The task now is to make that route scalable, more cost-effective, and more accessible to designers and manufacturers.
That’s what this work aims to do - remove barriers, reduce risk, and create the conditions for confident adoption - not decades from now, but within the development cycles of current programmes.
Talk to our team
If you're developing high-temperature systems and looking for practical insight into what these materials can deliver - and where they still need work - NCC can help.
We're a not-for-profit engineering centre with deep materials expertise, full-scale facilities and a remit to strengthen UK capability for global delivery. Our success is through your organisational growth, and from UK manufacturing being successful with the adoption of this new and emerging technology.
