Society is dependent upon the continuous functioning of critical infrastructures such as road bridges and energy supply. These infrastructures are exposed to high loads and harsh environmental conditions through their lifetime in operation and materials failures lead to down time having vast negative effects on productivity and well-being in society in terms of lost time, shortened life cycles and increased service costs. So engineers face the challenge to develop durable materials compatible with industrial standards in an economically viable way. Composites represent attractive materials and are increasingly used for such applications since they demonstrate low weight, high strength and stiffness and high environmental resistance. However composites suffer from sudden brittle failure mainly due to production defects and handling damages; this is currently handled by strict quality and process control from manufacturers, resulting in high production costs which can represent a barrier to introduction and development of composites in a wide range of applications. The general objective of DACOMAT is to develop more damage tolerant and damage predictable low cost composite materials in particular aimed for used in large load carrying constructions like bridges, buildings, wind-turbine blades and off shore structures. The developed materials and condition monitoring solutions will enable composite structures to be designed and manufactured as large parts allowing for more and larger manufacturing defects and the need for manual inspection to be dramatically reduced. A demonstration of the materials’ performances in relevant environment will be conducted in two business cases: wind turbine blades and road bridge beams, while both LCC and LCA analysis will also strengthen the project’s credibility.The project gathers the full industrial value chain: ranging from materials development and manufacturing to composite parts demonstrators and standardisation.

NEODAMP is marked in the ITD Airframe part B, oriented to highly integrated innovative structural components, for the Large Passenger Aircraft. NEODAMP will develop new prepreg composite materials for structural purposes in the aircraft, able to support structural loads and other additional functions. The project is focused on acoustic damping and complemented with electrical conductivity studies while using techniques related to additional embedded and/or integrated functionality. Composite materials will be chosen among those provided by a widely experienced manufacturer, to meet the future needs and requirements given by the topic manager. Activities are distributed along 36 months, and tasks are associated to 3 main topics: material development, screening and process ability. In order to find the optimal material, a series of key characteristics will be selected, such as acoustic damping, structural and mechanical properties, HSE requirements, Fire, Smoke&Toxicity resistance for fuselage applications, resistance to environmental factors, automatic manufacturing and costs. The damping material will be improved and modified to adjusts properties such as tacking or curing parameters. All the cited features will be deeply studied through a test campaign, at coupon level using raw damping material and the embedded damping prepreg composite material. The wide variety of tests will include from damping behavior and vibro-acoustic performance to lightning strike protection, including aging, common mechanical properties and physicochemical tests. Needed panels and embedded design will be done and manufactured by the partners. Results of the cited works altogether will guide to the optimal design and manufacturing of trials, which will reach to material improvements also. The production of demonstrators will be oriented to automatic fuselage production by using automatic fiber placement techniques and always considering possible solutions for industrialization.

This proposal involves mathematical modelling of the burning and degradation of mechanical properties of flame retadant glass fibre reinforced plastic laminates. At Bolton, novel flame - retardant laminates have been developed and patented during an earlier EPSRC project. These laminates contain novel flame retardant chemicals and inherently flame retardant cellulosic fibres as additives in the resin matrix or as additional fabric layer. Some laminates also contain polymer layered silicate nanocomposites with or without conventional flame retardants. The laminates show improved flame reatrdant and residual mechanical properties after fire/heat exposure compared to unmodified laminates. This proposal is a joint attempt by 'Fire and Heat Resistant Materials' group at Bolton Institute and 'Fire Engineering Research Group' at University of Manchester to numerically predict their burning and mechanical behaviour under a fire condition. The Bolton team will focus on the burning aspect and the Manchester team the burning induced degradation of mechanical properties. Results from the Bolton team will provide input of material damage and temperature information to the Manchester team so that the outcome of this project will be an integrated predictive model for combining both burning and burning-induced mechanical behaviour. A limited amount of mechanical tests at elevated temperatures will be carried out to provide data for validation of the numerical models developed.

This Industrial Doctoral Centre (IDC) addresses a national need by building on the strengths of the existing EngD in Micro- and NanoMaterials and Technologies (MiNMaT) and the University of Surrey's excellent track record of working with industry to provide a challenging, innovative and transformative research environment in materials science and engineering. Following the proven existing pattern, each research engineer (RE) will undertake their research with their sponsor at their sponsor's premises. The commitment of potential sponsors is demonstrated in the significant number of accompanying letters of support. Taking place over all four years, carefully integrated intensive short courses (normally one week duration) form the taught component of the EngD. These courses build on each other and augment the research. By using a core set of courses, graduates from a number of physical science/engineering disciplines can acquire the necessary background in materials. This is essential as there are insufficient numbers of students who have studied materials at undergraduate level. The research focus of this IDC will be the solution of academically challenging and industrially relevant processing-microstructure-property relationship problems, which are the corner-stones of the discipline. This will be possible because REs will interact with internationally leading academics and have access to a suite of state-of-the-art characterisation instrumentation, enabling them to obtain extensive hands on experience. As materials features as one of the University's seven research priority areas, there is strong institutional support as demonstrated in the Vice Chancellor's supporting letter, which pledges 2.07M of new money for this IDC. As quality and excellence run through all aspects of this IDC, those graduating with an EngD in MiNMaT will be the leaders and innovators of tomorrow with the confidence, knowledge and research expertise to tackle the most challenging problems to keep UK industry ahead of its competitors.