Industry applications
The centre addresses engineering applications including, but not limited to: manufacturing process simulation (additive manufacturing, machining, extrusion); lightweight structures (crashworthiness and impact protection); defence (ballistic and blast loading, fragmentation); asset integrity (damaged structures, extreme temperatures and hostile environments). Our research includes validation and demonstration of the technology in an industrially relevant environment (up to TRL 6), naturally working with a range of engineering sectors including:
- Automotive
- Aerospace
- Energy
- Petrochemical
- Offshore and
- Defence.
The centre’s expertise in engineering allows for a variety of industry-focused problems to be addressed and realistic models considered.
Manufacturing Made Smarter
This UK Industrial Strategy challenge identifies a number of themes and areas of interest to deliver through collaborative R&D opportunities, Research centres, Technology Accelerators, Test Beds, Demonstrators and Networks. Of direct relevance to the centre are: · Digital twins of facilities & processes to optimise future designs or current state · Virtual product testing, verification and validation, quality monitoring and inspection With computational simulations tools being a necessary enabling capability for many of the other areas of interest identified for this challenge.
Driving the Electric Revolution challenge
This UK Industrial Strategy challenge addresses the UK's ability to deliver next generation electric vehicles, hybrid aircraft, energy generation, smart grids, industrial drives, consumer products, low-carbon off-highway for construction and agriculture, low-carbon maritime and rail. With investment in industry, collaborating with academia, as the mechanism. Two of the identified strands within this challenge relate to high volume and low volume manufacture, both of which require suitable computational simulation tools valid for the relevant materials and conditions .
Material Systems for Demanding Environments
Developing materials solutions and systems will enable a ‘step-change’ in component development for applications in aggressive environments for sectors including energy, transport and medical. This research theme is compatible with the centre as industrial use of new material solutions requires suitable design and analysis tools. Building collaboration with this activity is an important target in expanding the centre’s network and impact over the first five years.