In this Global Perspectives blog, Professor Conchúr Ó Brádaigh FREng FRSE, Immediate Past-President of SAMPE Europe and Vice-President and Head of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sheffield, explores the opportunities and challenges of scaling composite manufacturing to meet growing global aerospace demand.
Drawing on recent events at the University of Sheffield, he considers what it will take to achieve the step-change in production rates needed for the next generation of aircraft.
The opportunities and challenges of developing high-rate manufacturing of composite primary aerostructures were highlighted by two recent events hosted by the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, where I work.
With global aircraft demand hitting record highs, and forecasts of more than 40,000 aircraft needed over the next 20 years, the question is how do we scale up composites production cost-effectively? To maintain composites’ position on new aircraft programmes – we will need to increase production rates from a dozen to over 100 shipsets a month. All of which will need new resins, automated preform handling, new infusion processes, and new tooling – and get it all qualified for aircraft use. Not an easy job!
The first event was the official opening of the University of Sheffield AMRC’s COMPASS facility – it stands for Composites at Speed and Scale – which was developed in cooperation with Boeing, the UK’s Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and local and UK government sources. The $75 million facility is a fully automated high-TRL workshop for the development and demonstration of resin infusion of large structures in a 10m long heated press, together with advanced dry fabric materials handling and high-pressure resin injection systems, all automated with some of the largest robots that you can buy.
Boeing are the first partner to use COMPASS, with a project called IHSS (Isothermic High-Rate Sustainable Structures), whose aim is to revolutionise production efficiency, reducing large component manufacturing times from approximately 40 hours down to just 4. This is the scale of improvement that is going to be needed to meet the aircraft demand of the future – unless the industry goes back to metal alloys. Other aerospace companies will follow, as the facility is open-access.
The second event was an international conference that I chaired in Sheffield called “Flow Processes in Composite Materials”, the 17th in a series of conferences that have been held since the first one was held in the UK in 1988. It was attended by over 100 delegates from 16 countries and was a 3-day event, featuring keynote speakers and paper presentations on topics such as liquid composite moulding, compression moulding, permeability measurement, computer-controlled processes, materials characterisation, additive manufacturing, residual stresses in composites manufacturing and interfacial issues. We had keynote speakers from the University of Delaware, Columbia University, Purdue University and the University of Bristol.
It was actually my own second time chairing a conference in this series, having chaired FPCM’3 in my earlier days as a young lecturer at the University of Galway in Ireland. A lot has happened in the intervening 32 years – in that time lightweight polymer composite materials have become indispensable in many industries, and even dominant in some, such as aerospace, wind energy and defence. Much progress has been made in understanding, characterising and simulating the fundamental processes that are involved in manufacturing these vital structures for industry – but it is clear that there is more to do to understand how to develop and qualify the new resins, fibres and processes for the step-change in composites production rates needed if our industry is to continue to prosper in the aircraft sector.
On the last day of our conference, we hosted an Industry Day at the University’s AMRC, where we heard presentations from a wide variety of industries, including McLaren, GKN Aerospace, Syensqo, M Torres, Airbus, Rolls Royce, Sigmatex, Composites Integration, Arkema and NCC. What united all of the industry presentations was the need for more robust characterisation and simulation tools, to enable faster and less costly development of new materials and processes for the coming decades, and the ability to automate and use advanced AI tools to reduce the number of manufacturing trials and mechanical tests that we need to qualify these new materials and to maintain and improve part quality during production. For a community of researchers that has been developing this fundamental understanding of composite materials processing, it was a welcome challenge, with exciting research possibilities, and no end of opportunity. Here’s to the high-rate composite materials and processes of the future!
“To maintain composites’ position on new aircraft programmes, we will need to increase production rates from a dozen to more than 100 shipsets per month.”
Prof. Conchúr Ó Brádaigh is currently Vice-President and Head of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sheffield, having been Chair of Materials Engineering at Edinburgh from 2015 to 2023, and Head of the School of Engineering there from 2018 to 2023. He is also an Adjunct Faculty at Purdue University, USA.
He has been a member of SAMPE for over 30 years and has just finished a 2-year term as President of SAMPE Europe. He is also Vice-Chair of the SAMPE UK & Ireland Chapter. He also chaired the SAMPE Europe 2024 conference, held in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
