University of Bath part of project set to investigate next-generation aircraft structures

The University of Bath is part of a £6.9 million project to address significant barriers in the design and manufacture of future composite aircraft structures.

The ‘Certification for Design: Reshaping the Testing Pyramid’ project is being led by the University of Southampton alongside the universities of Bath, Bristol and Exeter as well as industry partners, and is funded by the Engineering a Physical Sciences Research Council.

The five year project will look to enable more structurally efficient and lightweight airframe that are essential for meeting future fuel and cost efficiency challenges, to maintain and enhance the UK’s international position in the aerospace industry.

Richard Butler, Professor of Aerospace Composites at the University of Bath GKN/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair, said: “The programme brings together experts in engineering, applied mathematics and statistics to address a challenge of crucial importance to future aircraft and other lightweight composite products. This alliance of regional universities and major industrial players is vital for the step change in efficiency and sustainability we need.”

“Models which predict micron-scale damage within large aircraft parts and account for variations are only possible using high-performance computer codes running over many hundreds of CPUs. The groundwork for these codes has been done by researchers at Bath and Exeter over the last few years.”