The UK composites industry faces an imperative to prioritise sustainability. The urgent need to reduce impact on the environment and ensure the availability of resources for future generations is critical to securing a prosperous and resilient future. Composite materials are crucial for delivering a Net-Zero future but pose several unique technical challenges. Sustainable Composites Engineering defines a holistic means of achieving environmental neutrality for composite products through production, service, and reuse. It incorporates the pursuit of more sustainable composite materials, with a mission of creating inherently sustainable composite solutions, able to perform in diverse environments, and made using new scientific advances, and new energy efficient, waste-free manufacturing procedures. Our proposed CDT in Innovation for Sustainable Composites Engineering will address the challenges by developing a workforce equipped with the skills to become leaders in the future sustainable economy and support UK industry competitiveness. Our CDT is jointly created by the Bristol Composites Institute, the University of Nottingham and the National Composites Centre (NCC). In addition to the EPSRC funding our CDT is also supported by industry and we have received 27 letters of support from companies in the UK Composites sector: Aerospace (Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Dowty, Leonardo, GKN), Defence (QinetiQ, AWE, BAE Systems), Automotive (Gordan Murray, JLR), Wind Energy (Vestas, EDF-Renewables), Marine (Tods), Rail (Network Rail), Oil and Gas (Magma Global), Hydrogen (Luxfer) alongside material suppliers (Hexcel, Solvay, iCOMAT, SHD), and specialist design and manufacturing companies (Pentaxia, Actuation Lab, LMAT, Molydyn), as well as RTOs (NPL, NCC). The total industrial commitment to our CDT is >£10M, with>£4M from NCC. From this it is clear that our CDT fits the Focus Area of Meeting a User Need. The CDT will provide a science-based framework for innovative, curiosity driven research and skills development to facilitate composites as the underpinning technology for a sustainable future. Critically, the CDT will offer an agile doctoral educational environment focused on advanced competencies and skills, tailored to industrial and commercial needs, providing academic excellence and encourage innovation. The ambitious goal of spanning Technology Readiness Levels (TRL 1-4) will be achieved by having a mix of university-based PhDs and industrially-based EngDs . Fundamental industrial sponsored research will be carried out by PhD students based at the Universities. The EngD students will spend 75% of their time in industry conducting a research project that is defined industry. Students will complete their doctoral studies in four years, the doctoral research will run concurrently with the taught component, so students are immersed in the research environment from the outset. The bespoke training programme demands the critical mass of a cohort. A specific role on our Management Board focuses on maximising cohort benefits to students. The cohort continuity across years will be ensured by a peer-to-peer mentoring programme, with all new students assigned a student mentor to support their studies, thereby creating an inclusive environment to provide students with a sense of place and ownership. Methods for developing and maintaining a cohort across multiple sites will be supported by our previous experience with the IDCs strategy and by: -A first year based in Bristol with students co-located to encourage interaction. -In-person workshops in year 2 credit bearing units and professional activities. -Peer-to-peer individual mentoring, as well as in DBT and credit-bearing workshops. -Annual welcome cohort integration event. -Annual conference and student-led networking. -Internal themed research seminars and group meetings -Student-led training and outreach activities.

Composite materials are becoming increasingly important for light-weight solutions in the transport and energy sectors. Reduced structural weight, with improved mechanical performance is essential to achieve aerospace and automotive's sustainability objectives, through reduced fuel-burn, as well as facilitating new technologies such as electric and hydrogen fuels. The nature of fibre reinforced composite materials however makes them highly susceptible to variation during the different stages of their manufacture. This can result in significant reductions in their mechanical performance and design tolerances not being met, reducing their weight saving advantages through requiring "over design". Modelling methods able to simulate the different processes involved in composite manufacture offer a powerful tool to help mitigate these issues early in the design stage. A major challenge in achieving good simulations is to consider the variability, inherent to both the material and the manufacturing processes, so that the statistical spread of possible outcomes is considered rather than a single deterministic result. To achieve this, a probabilistic modelling framework is required, which necessitates rapid numerical tools for modelling each step in the composite manufacturing process. Focussing specifically on textile composites, this project will develop a new bespoke solver, with methods to simulate preform creation, preform deposition and finally, preform compaction, three key steps of the composite manufacturing process. Aided by new and developing processor architectures, this bespoke solver will deliver a uniquely fast, yet accurate simulation capability. The methods developed for each process will be interrogated through systematic probabilistic sensitivity analyses to reduce their complexity while retaining their predictive capability. The aim being to find a balance between predictive capability and run-time efficiency. This will ultimately provide a tool that is numerically efficient enough to run sufficient iterations to capture the significant stochastic variation present in each of the textile composite manufacturing processes, even at large, component scale. The framework will then be applied to industrially relevant problems. Accounting for real-world variability, the tools will be used to optimise the processes for use in design and to further to explore the optimising of manufacturing processes. Close collaboration with the project's industrial partners and access to their demonstrator and production manufacturing data will ensure that the tools created are industry relevant and can be integrated within current design processes to achieve immediate impact. This will enable a step change in manufacturing engineers' ability to reach an acceptable solution with significantly fewer trials, less waste and faster time to market, contributing to the digital revolution that is now taking place in industry.

The Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials (BCFN) is an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training at the forefront of creative graduate training, equipping students to meet global grand challenges. The BCFN focus is to produce the highest quality students capable of designing, measuring and understanding advanced functional materials from their fundamental components, to their real-world applications. This is achieved by breaking down the traditional boundaries of chemistry, physics, biology and engineering, and providing training in a highly creative, adaptive and flexible way. Functional materials, and their characterisation, are vital to the UK economy, and are found in a very diverse range of application sectors including medicine, energy, food and coatings, in a wide range of high value products and are key to fundamental aspects of science. Understanding materials across all length scales and application areas is pivotal to our success - there is therefore a clear need for highly-skilled graduates, and an understanding of materials across all length scales is pivotal to our success. The global market for advanced materials is predicted to be $957bn by 2015, and we are committed to providing cohorts of skilled scientists who can lead innovation in both academia and industry. Our approach is to embed the training program into every aspect of the student experience. This means that the students receive the strongest possible scientific foundations through taught courses and research projects but also develop a fully rounded set of skills, including communication, team working, entrepreneurship and creativity. We have a proven track record of excellence in graduate training and have pioneered innovative tools where the needs of the student are at the core. These have included new online learning tools, a mixture of short- and long-term research projects to promote choice and a wider research experience, and intense involvement with industry which allows students to be exposed to "realworld" problems, ensuring that their creativity is always directed towards finding solutions. We have an extensive expert network of supervisors who deliver the training, whilst collaborating to create new research areas. Our network has more than 100 academics from 15 departments across four faculties at the University of Bristol, aswell as industrial partners. This ensures that the BCFN research and training can adapt to the changing needs of both the UK and global demands for materials. Our centre is located at the nexus of funding council priority areas, and has studentship support (3 p.a.), staff funding, and dedicated space support from the University. From 2014, we will build on our strong foundations and evolve our training. Our links with industry will be strengthened further and via our Bristol-Industry Graduate Engagement (BRIDGE) program we will build sustainable, long-term research platforms to ensure a true benefit to the economy. We will take our successful training model and create a distance learning platform which can be used by partners overseas and in industry through innovative e-learning. We will run summer schools with these partners to expand the training experience for both BCFN students and partners alike. We will continue our extensive public engagement with schools, the general public and policy makers, ensuring that at all stages we communicate with our stakeholders and receive feedback. We have a strong student-focussed management team to ensure quality and delivery. This team, composed of a Director, Principal, co-Principal, Teaching Fellow, Industrial Research Fellow and Manager, and a wider Operational Team drawn from our core departments of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, represent a wide range of research experience from Fellows of the Royal Society to early career fellows, covering a range of strengths in functional materials with proven leadership and research track records.

A particular aspect of polymer matrix composites is that in most cases the material structure is defined in the final stages of manufacture. This provides both advantages and challenges. Existing composites technologies are reaching maturity (e.g. Airbus A350 and Boeing 787), and new material forms are being developed to take further advantage of the opportunities that composites can offer (e.g. spatially varying properties, multi- functionality, light weight). The detailed material microstructure (e.g. final fibre paths, local fibre volume fraction and imperfections) is determined by the various processes involved in their manufacture. These details ultimately control the integrity of composite structures, however this information is not available at the early stages of conceptual design and stress analysis. This lack of suitable predictive tools means that the design of composite structures is often based on costly iterations of design, prototyping, testing and redesign. This Platform Grant will help replace some of this empiricism with fully predictive analysis capabilities. A suite of advanced composite manufacturing simulation tools will be developed, and a dedicated team of experienced researchers will be established to sustain knowledge on new simulation capabilities for new and emerging manufacturing methods. In parts made by Automated Fibre Placement (AFP) much of the tow path optimisation to improve part quality and production rate is done at the manufacturing stage. The research will develop numerical models that can accurately predict the as-manufactured geometry and fibre paths, making virtual manufacturing data available at a much earlier stage of design, ensuring parts are manufactured right-first-time with a minimum of defects. For liquid moulding technologies, it is necessary to control the deformable fibre preforms during handling, deposition, draping, infusion or high pressure injection using stabilisation techniques. However, some of these technologies are not yet widely used due to the lack of suitable modelling tools. The team will build on their extensive understanding of the compaction and consolidation processes in composite precursors, complex preforms and prepregs to devise process simulation tools that will unlock the full potential of new liquid moulding technologies. To maximise the reach of this research, the team will ensure that the simulation tools are suitable for future industrialisation. The software generated will be fully documented, optimised and robust, so that it can serve as a focal point for collaborative research with academia and industry on advanced process simulation techniques for composites. In the longer term, hybrid preforms and aligned discontinuous fibre composites will be explored. Hybrid preforms incorporate tailored metallic inserts or reinforcements (e.g. produced via additive layer manufacturing). Such technologies can only be optimised if appropriate numerical tools are available for suitable multi-material process simulation. Aligned discontinuous fibre composites based on novel manufacturing methods require new constitutive models and process simulation tools so that their complex forming characteristics, thermal distortion and final microstructure can be accurately predicted to facilitate their adoption by different industries. Working at the forefront of composites technologies, this Platform Grant stands in a highly advantageous position to step ahead of the current manufacturing paradigm, where modelling and understanding are at best catching up with the technology development, and pave the way for the manufacturing of tomorrow.