High-Volume Composites Manufacturing Cell with Digital Twinning Capability

近年来，复合材料的使用大幅增加，预计到2030年，英国的部门将从15亿GB增长到12B。这种潜力在很大程度上与车辆轻量化、可再生能源和基础设施的耐用结构交付以及下一代单通道民用飞机有关。除了通过就业和出口对经济产生直接影响外，所有这些都有可能对英国的气候变化和基础设施目标产生立竿见影的积极影响。然而，实现这些目标主要取决于行业提供这些目标应用所需的批量和质量水平的结构的能力。为了应对这些挑战，我们寻求开发具有数字孪生能力的大批量复合材料制造单元(HV-COMMAND)。该单元具有四个组件，并被配置为促进对复合材料压缩制造过程的每个阶段(设计、处理、成形和检查)的研究。因此，HV-COMMAND CELL将提供工业自动化复合材料制造的端到端复制，同时保留在适合研究环境的拉伸目标内运行的尺寸和灵活性要求。单元内数据丰富的阶段组合最终将提供制造过程的虚拟复制--一个捕捉成形过程中材料和工艺变化影响的“数字孪生兄弟”。这将促进未来的工艺开发，允许进行高风险的可行性研究，同时降低实验设备损坏的风险。

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.