High-Volume Composites Manufacturing Cell with Digital Twinning Capability

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The use of composite materials has increased substantially over recent years, leading to projected UK sector growth from £1.5b to £12b by 2030. Much of this potential is associated with lightweighting of vehicles, delivery of durable structures for renewable energy and infrastructure, and next generation single aisle civil aircraft. These all have the potential to make an immediate and positive impact on both the UK's climate change and infrastructure targets, in addition to direct impact on the economy through jobs and exports. However, realising these targets depends primarily on the ability of the industry to deliver structures at volumes and quality levels demanded by these target applications.In order to meet these challenges, we seek to develop a High-Volume Composites Manufacturing Cell with Digital Twinning Capability (HV-COMMAND). The cell features four components and is configured to facilitate research into each stage of the composite compression manufacturing process (design, handling, forming and inspection). HV-COMMAND cell will therefore deliver an end-to-end replication of industrial automated composites manufacture whilst retaining the size and flexibility requirements to operate within stretch targets appropriate to a research setting. The data-rich combination of stages within the cell will ultimately deliver a virtual duplication of the manufacturing process - a 'digital twin' capturing the effect of material and process variabilities during forming. This will facilitate future process developments, permitting high-risk feasibility studies whilst mitigating risk of damage to experimental equipment.