PhD students from the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Composites Science, Engineering and Manufacturing (CoSEM CDT) joined fellow researchers from the Bristol Composites Institute (BCI) for recent industrial site visits to Aerospace Integrated Research & Test Centre (AIRTeC) and Zund UK respectively.
The AIRTeC facility at the Airbus Filton site is a £40 million state-of-the-art facility designed to provide the most advanced working environment and tools for Airbus, suppliers, partners, and academia, and all just a stone’s throw from the University precinct. At the site test leaders carry out the full end-to-end process of design, structural analysis, manufacture and, of course, the operational testing of engineering models.
It was a real treat for the BCI researchers to receive a guided tour of the facilities and to hear from Airbus and AIRTeC employees more about the work they do. Researchers also had the opportunity to network with Airbus staff over lunch.
Ian Lee, second year CDT student, said of the AIRTeC site visit “It was a really interesting morning. Please can you also pass on my thanks to all the staff at Airbus who gave up their time for our visit. It was a really well organised look into some of the real-world research and testing challenges they are trying to solve.”
Find out more about Airbus.
The Zund UK site visit, necessitated travel significantly further afield. Still, there’s nothing like a long coach journey for getting to know your fellow researchers and all who went certainly agreed it was worth the journey.
The Zund UK Demonstration Centre in St Albans, Hertfordshire, is equipped with the latest industry-leading digital flatbed cutting machines and software solutions.
The jam-packed visit included a digital cutting demonstration using carbon fibre/glass fibre and thermoplastic composites and a software demonstration showing the digitisation of cut parts/nesting software and file preparation for digital cutting. Talks were arranged from Zund UK Senior Managers, plus an ex-Formula 1 guest speaker.
Siyuan Chen, third year CDT student, said of the Zund UK site visit: “This was an excellent opportunity to see a real industrial example of how digital and automatic techniques can be used to make the manufacturing processes much more efficient and precise than ever. As a PhD student working on digitalisation and composites manufacturing, this was an inspiration for me on how our contribution from the University can come to the ground one day.”
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