Fibre reinforced Metal Matrix Composites have extensive applications in high growth industrial sectors such as space and aerospace which are key to the UK's economic growth and industrial strategy for exports. These lightweight materials offer 30% weight savings in direct replacement parts and up to 70% weight saving where system designs can be optimised. The UK has a strong history in the technology and the core supply chain from raw materials to final products. TISICS is the only integrated fibre and metal composite manufacturer worldwide and has extensive experience in developing component and process technologies for a wide range of applications including: -Aero-engines: Lighter, higher operating temperature components reduce fuel burn and hence CO2 emissions. -Aircraft landing gear: Lighter, higher stiffness gear reduces fuel burn and titanium composites offer an alternative to chrome or cadmium plated steels. 30% potential weight saving equates to 340 tonnes CO2 per year per single aisle or over 2 million tonnes across the world fleet per year. -Satellite pressure vessel: lighter, near net shape propellant and pressurant tanks reduce system mass and half lead time which will be advantageous for constellation satellites. -Space robotics and structures: Lighter, more compact systems are key to space exploration and in-space servicing. -Energy: Lighter, more robust steam turbines will increase energy generation efficiency, reducing emissions. -Automotive: in the longer term with high production volume economics, MMCs offer lighter systems capable of reducing emissions from combustion engines or range extension for electric vehicles. In order to industrialise this technology significant development is required to address automation of each stage of the manufacturing process. Automation will be a combination of mechanisation of systems, digital sensors for process control and in-process monitoring alongside artificial-intelligence and machine learning to provide optimised design and processing rules for components. Manufacture of safety critical components for space and aerospace will require robust in-process monitoring and recording where any embedded defects would be challenging and costly to inspect and resolve at the end of line. TISICS will ensure the development is aligned to customer product assurance needs. TISICS will work with The University of Manchester and Derby University to develop this technology. This builds on existing research activity with both Universities and enables TISICS access to world class researchers and cutting edge research equipment beyond the reach of an SME. The. Growth of MMC technology will be accelerated through greater University research and this experience feeds into teaching programmes to train engineers for the future. The research links between the Universities and TISICS to Industrial Primes such as Airbus and Rolls-Royce will help their uptake of these materials in the future as the technology is transitioned into industrial supply chains. The project builds on 30 years composite experience and recent successes automating the fibre production processes at TISICS. This project helps maintain the UK at the forefront of advanced materials development and industrialisation, thereby accelerating the introduction of lighter materials and hence reductions in emissions for the future.

The Open University (OU) has over 30 years leading space science activities including the development of the Ptolemy instrument that took the first in situ chemical measurements on the surface of a comet, as part of the Rosetta mission. The mission captured the public's imagination and this project's PI played a key role in the design, manufacture and scientific interpretation of the results from the Ptolemy instrument. He was also a key member of the team that developed the Gas Analysis Package on Beagle2 and he is currently part of the PROSPA team developing instrumentation to for the LUNA27 mission to search form volatiles on the Moon in 2021. A key subsystem in Ptolemy was the gas control assembly which relied on a high performance valve solution, provided by a project partner. With the future supply of the valve in jeopardy, he led the development of an innovative fluid valve technology that was patented by the OU. As with most space technologies, the USP of this valve is that has been developed as a fit-for-purpose solution that answers the scientific and operational questions set, under the tight constraints of size, mass, energy, power, whilst also making it robust and capable of operating under environmental extremes. This out-of-the-box solution has huge prospective spin-out potential both through enabling upstream (satellite-based) developments and through its application in a range of terrestrial markets 21st Century. The main objectives for the fellow, will be to support the PI in the ongoing research and development of the valve; identify new, terrestrial applications for this space-enabled technology, whilst providing sufficient academic support necessary to achieve significant knowledge transfer and subsequent economic return for the university and UK industry and a social benefit to the UK

Materials and structures in many engineering systems are often subject to dynamic loads, which place challenging constraints and requirements on their design and manufacturing. For example, aerodynamic loads can induce significant vibrations of bladed disks of turbo-machinery potentially causing high cycle fatigue, with major implication on the cost, safety, and reliability of engines, significant efforts are regularly necessary during design to prevent the vibration problems. A wide range of research studies have been conducted to address these challenges with current activities mainly focusing on the development of more advanced and effective techniques for finite element modelling, simulation, and optimization. These are gradually extending the framework of the current state-of-the-art, but one of the main challenges remain, which is: "how to produce a high-fidelity reduced order model and conduct the reduced order model-based design for engineering materials and systems that need to withstand demanding dynamic loads". In order to fundamentally resolve the challenges, this project will develop an innovative digital manufacturing methodology based on the complex systems science and demonstrate the effectiveness and significance of the novel method in three case studies supported by the end users and stakeholders in the UK, including Rolls-Royce plc, Wilson Benesch (sound/acoustics), Thomas Swann Ltd (nanomaterials), MS Research (charity), TISICS (metal matrix composite design and manufacturing), Carter Manufacturing (bearings for railway applications), and MSC Software (digital manufacturing software). The project involves a close multidisciplinary collaboration between the researchers in system and control, mechanical and structure engineering, and materials science from University of Sheffield, University of Bristol, Imperial College, and University of Derby. The achievements are expected to significantly facilitate the fulfilment of the EPSRC vision for Manufacturing the Future, resolving serious challenges related to digital manufacturing and more effectively addressing high-value and specialist design and manufacturing of aerospace systems, advanced materials, and next generation railway system components. These can potentially produce significant benefits to future design and manufacturing activities centred around core UK plc industries.

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral training in Materials for Demanding Environments will primarily address the Structural Integrity and Materials Behaviour priority area, and span into the Materials Technologies area. The CDT will target the oil & gas, aerospace and nuclear power industrial sectors, as well as the Defence sector. Research and training will be undertaken on metals and alloys, composites, coatings and ceramics and the focus will be on understanding the mechanisms of material degradation. The Centre will instil graduates with an understanding of structural integrity assessment methodologies with the aim to designing and manufacturing materials that last longer within a framework that enables safe lifetimes to be accurately predicted. A CDT is needed as the capability of current materials to withstand demanding environments is major constraint across a number of sectors; failure by corrosion alone is estimated to cost over $2.2 Trillion globally each year. Further understanding of the mechanisms of failure, and how these mechanisms interact with one another, would enable the safe and timely withdrawal of materials later in their life. New advanced materials and coatings, with quantifiable lifetimes, are integral to the UK's energy and manufacturing companies. Such technology will be vital in harvesting oil & gas safely from increasingly inaccessible reservoirs under high pressures, temperatures and sour environments. Novel, more cost-effective aero-engine materials are required to withstand extremely oxidative high temperature environments, leading to aircraft with increased fuel efficiency, reduced emissions, and longer maintenance cycles. New lightweight alloys, ceramics and composites could deliver fuel efficiency in the aerospace and automotive sectors, and benefit personal and vehicle armour for blast protection. In the nuclear sector, new light water power plants demand tolerance to neutron radiation for extended durations, and Generation IV plants will need to withstand high operating temperatures. It is vital to think beyond traditional disciplines, linking aspects of metallurgy, materials chemistry, non-destructive evaluation, computational modelling and environmental sciences. Research must involve not just the design and manufacturing of new materials, but the understanding of how to test and observe materials behaviour in demanding service environments, and to develop sophisticated models for materials performance and component lifetime assessment. The training must also include aspects of validation, risk assessment and sustainability.

In highly engineered materials, microscale defects can determine failure modes at the compo-nent/system scale. While X-ray CT is unique in being able to image, find, and follow defects non-destructively at the microscale, currently it can only do so for mm sized samples. This currently presents a significant limitation for manufacturing design and safe life prediction where the nature and location of the defects are a direct consequence of the manufacturing process. For example, in additive manufacturing, the defects made when manufacturing a test-piece may be quite different from those in a three dimensionally complex additively manufactured engineering component. Similarly, for composite materials, small-scale samples are commonly not large enough to properly represent all the hierarchical scales that control structural behaviour. This collaboration between the European Research Radiation Facility (ESRF) and the National Research Facility for laboratory CT (NRF) will lead to a million-fold increase in the volume of material that can be X-ray imaged at micrometre resolution through the development and exploitation of a new beamline (BM18). Further, this unparalleled resolution for X-rays at energies up to 400keV enables high Z materials to be probed as well as complex environmental stages. This represents a paradigm shift allowing us to move from defects in sub-scale test-pieces, to those in manufactured components and devices. This will be complemented by a better understanding of how such defects are introduced during manufacture and assembly. It will also allow us to scout and zoom manufactured structures to identify the broader defect distribution and then to follow the evolution of specific defects in a time-lapse manner as a function of mechanical or environmental loads, to learn how they lead to rapid failure in service. This will help to steer the design of smarter manufacturing processes tailored to the individual part geometry/architecture and help to establish a digital twin of additive and composite manufacturing processes. Secondly, we will exploit high frame rate imaging on ID19 exploiting the increased flux available due to the new ESRF-extremely bright source upgrade to study the mechanisms by which defects are introduced during additive manufacture and how defects can lead to very rapid failures, such as thermal runaway in batteries In this project, we will specifically focus on additive manufacturing, composite materials manufacturing and battery manufacturing and the in situ and operando performance and degradation of such manufactured articles, with the capabilities being disseminated and made more widely available to UK academics and industry through the NRF. The collaboration will also lead to the development of new data handling and analysis processes able to handle the very significant uplift in data that will be obtained and will lead to multiple site collaboration on experiments in real-time. This will enable us to work together as a multisite team on projects thereby involving less travelling and off-setting some of the constraints on demanding experiments posed by COVID-19.