This was the first time the annual conference, which is now in its 13th year, was organised virtually. The event was a success with over 320 people from around the world attending the webinar and the virtual poster session.

The conference began with a welcome and introductions¹ from Professor Michael Wisnom, Director of the Bristol Composites Institute. The introductions were followed by research updates from the three themes within the Institute; Materials², Structures³ and Manufacturing & Design⁴.

After the research updates, Dr Giuseppe Dell'Anno gave an update about activities at the National Composites Centre⁵.

Finally, we saw presentations from the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Composites Science, Engineering and Manufacturing⁶ and the Industrial Doctorate Centre in Composites Manufacture⁷. 

The webinar ended with a Q&A session where the delegates had an opportunity to ask questions from our panellists.

You can watch the recording of the presentations on YouTube. The presentations are available for download below this article. 

Following the webinar, there was a virtual poster session, which provided conference attendees with an opportunity to interact with our students and researchers and vote for their favourites in a poster competition.

There were two winners in the student category: Noémie Fedon and Ali Kandemir. Andrés Rivero won the Research Associate category, with Ganapathi Ammasai Sendogan and Michael Elkington on the shared second place.

You can view the research posters presented at the conference.

"Whilst we were sorry not to be able to welcome people to Bristol, we were delighted that the online event enabled us to present activities here to attendees from six continents!", Institute Director Michael Wisnom concluded.

Poster competition

Student category winners

• Noémie Fedon – A novel method for designing blended laminate composite structures 
• Ali Kandemir – Characterisation of natural fibres for sustainable composite materials delivered using HiPerDiF

RA category winners

• 1st place: Andrés Rivero – Flexible Airplanes? Achieving higher fuel efficiency by continuously adapting wing geometry
• Shared 2nd place: Ganapathi Ammasai Sengodan – A visco-elastic cohesive zone model for rate and temperature dependent interlaminar fracture of composites and Michael Elkington – HyVR: Hybrid Vacuum-Robotic forming

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