NCC Newsletter Summer '22

A UK-first wild water kayak, made from sustainable composite materials, has been designed and manufactured by a team of 19 graduates, apprentices, and year-in-industry students from the NCC. 

This year, the UK's national awareness campaign Net Zero Week took place from 2-8 July. We celebrated the critical role that composites play in the UK's journey to net zero.

Engineers at the NCC are working with Airbus on its innovative ‘eXtra Performance Wing’ demonstrator programme designed to accelerate technologies in wing aerodynamics that improve performance and reduce environmental impact.

The NCC is supporting a new consortium that has been formed to address the growing challenge of decarbonisation and recycling of composite materials in the marine industry and beyond, with a long-term aim of creating the UK’s first glass fibre composites recycling and re-use facility of its kind.  

Metro Mayor Dan Norris met the bright young minds behind some of the West of England’s leading green tech initiatives, during a visit to UWE Bristol’s School of Engineering on Frenchay campus last week.

The Seismic platform has won its first award, the “Excellence in Innovation” category at the Herts and Beds Constructing Excellence Club (HBCEC) Awards 2022.

The NCC has welcomed materials experts Blueshift as an SME Affiliate Member. Blueshift designs, develops, and manufactures proprietary thin Thermal Protection Systems (TPS) for Aerospace & Defense that significantly increase the working temperature and operational lifetimes of composite, plastic, and metal aerospace parts. 

The National Composites Centre is delighted to welcome Cristex Composite Materials - one of the UK’s premier suppliers of High-Performance Fibres and Fabrics for the UK Composites and Reinforced Plastics Markets – to its SME Affiliate Scheme.

In recent years, the UK manufacturing industry has witnessed a rise in servitisation-based business models. However, despite increasing interest towards the incorporation of servitisation models, uptake in the UK is not as widespread as it could be.

Ensinger - a world leader in the field of engineering plastics – has joined the National Composite Centre’s SME Affiliate Scheme. With over 50 years of experience in the field of thermoplastic materials, Ensinger offers a wide portfolio of products and services for thermoplastic composites. 

The NCC has successfully completed a proof-of-concept project that demonstrates the transformative impact of digital tools on the design process for the complex engineering industry. 

In its first annual review, the NCC has published the key findings of the SusWIND programme and sets out ambitious plans to tackle the main challenges of legacy and future blades. 

Engineers at the NCC, along with British SME partners B&M Longworth Ltd and Cygnet Texkimp, have successfully reclaimed continuous carbon fibres from a whole pressure vessel and re-used them to manufacture a new pressure vessel. This is the first time this process has been achieved in the UK. 

The National Composites Centre exhibited at JEC World, the leading international composites show, as part of the UK Pavilion with Composites UK, the Department of International Trade and 25 other UK companies.

SMEs in the West of England Combined Authority region can develop their digital capability for free, as part of the Workforce for the Future programme. The Digital Learning Factory training modules give businesses and their employees the understanding and confidence to apply digital technologies in the workplace. 

The NCC is advancing the knowledge required to establish a dynamic UK supply chain, investing in hydrogen pressure vessel research and development to seed manufacture in the UK, progressing the technology to help it to remain competitive in the future.

Intertwined with design is the use of materials. When materials contribute over 70% of the environmental impact of a blade from cradle-to-grave, it is vital to consider how they’re used, their provenance, and possible repair and EoL options.

Innovations in transport capture our imagination; be they planes, trains or driverless cars, we are enthralled by new ways to compress time and space. But great advances also generate scepticism in equal measure – there is no going forward without some push back.

Designed in line with the government’s Construction 2025 targets, award winning Seismic II exceeds them in every way.

The weight of the vehicle base is critical to optimising its performance. Fully loaded, the current Ford Transit van has up to a two-and-a-half-ton payload capacity in a five-ton GVM configuration.

To gain competitive advantage in a global marketplace, it is crucial for companies to digitalise processes to reduce product development timelines and maintain engineering leadership. 

School children from across the West of England came to UWE Bristol recently to share their sustainable transport designs with engineers and peers over a day full of fun and engaging activities.

The latest group of women to join UWE Bristol’s engineering mentoring programme, Women Like Me, took part in an online re-balancing workshop on May 11th, delivered by Developmental Coach, Joyce Birnie.

Read the Summer '22 edition of the Curiosity Connections Newsletter. The Curiosity Connections network is delivered as a collaboration between UWE Bristol and the STEM Ambassador Hub West England, with funding from Digital Engineering Technology & Innovation (DETI).

The Engineering Outreach team at UWE Bristol are sending engaging role models, alongside a fully immersive planetarium show, into schools to inspire local children to think creatively – like an engineer – and design a sustainable future for our planet.

The Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers – AFBE live – held their first annual conference in April, sending happy UWE staff and students home with some sparkling trophies.

Over 150 children and counting from schools across the West have enjoyed a long-overdue trip to the School of Engineering and the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Engineers from across the South West scurried out of the rain and into UWE’s outreach classroom to find out what local children had invented in this round of – “If you were an engineer, what would you do?”

This year, the NCC is exhibiting at Cenex-LCV on 7-8 September at UTAC, Millbrook, the technology exhibition on low carbon vehicles. 

The NCC will be exhibiting at the International Composites Summit in London 21-22 September 2022, please find us for a discussion at stand C2. Tim Young and Enrique Garcia will also be speaking at the conference.

Do you have a novel materials or manufacturing technology relating to the use of composite material in high temperature service environments? Our third Technology Day will focus on composites for high service temperature in the defence sector. 

James Lightfoot will be presenting on opportunities and risks for the offshore industry.  His talk will feature various projects, including Joule and SusWIND.

Neil Appleton will deliver the keynote speech 'Utilising advanced materials in infrastructure' and will also be part of the judging panel for the awards.Kaloyana Kostova will also join the closing panel discussion 'Unlocking regulatory challenges around material innovation'.

James Lightfoot will be presenting on Joule and SusWIND programmes at the ‘Wind Turbine Blade Manufacture conference'.

The NCC is offering SMEs in the West of England Combined Authority region the opportunity to develop their digital capability for free, as part of the Workforce for the Future programme.

If you have an engineering background, but are new to composites, a basic knowledge of their composition and manufacture is essential to begin your journey. Or, maybe you don't work with composites on a day-to-day basis, but you are working with suppliers, colleagues or customers who do, and being able to knowledgably engage with them is important.

Future legislation will dictate that you can't just discard composite components into landfill and the need to repair in order to extend life expectancy is set to increase even further. Repair of composites can be more complex than the repair of more traditional metallic components and, of course, there is always the need to regain structural integrity whilst maintaining functionality.

If you're a Technician who's new to composites manufacture using resin infusion this course will provide you with the skills and knowledge to avoid common mistakes and safely produce better parts.

This course provides an introduction to how businesses can start thinking differently about their operation, products and production processes in order to meet new legislation and support the drive for change.

During this course we'll give you the background knowledge you need to optimise your use of prepreg materials in order to achieve the best possible outcomes. We'll also teach you the techniques used by technicians and you'll have the opportunity to practice what you've learnt.

Use of the correct joints is vital to creating highly functional composite structures. We highly recommend this course for composite designers who want to improve their approach to bonding and joining composite materials ensuring better results.

The NCC is bringing its world-leading capabilities in composites to the Northern Ireland Advanced Composites and Engineering Centre (NIACE), with a particular focus on working with SMEs and upskilling workforces to support the economic growth of the regional composite industry.