The development of a new generation of advanced fibrous composite materials plays a key role in the future evolution of the aerospace sector due to their very high weight-to-strength ratio that can lead to higher operating efficiencies per revenue passenger kilometre. However, while the fibre dominant properties guarantee excellent in-plane load-bearing characteristics, traditional composite materials exhibit weak resistance to out-of-plane loads, making them susceptible to delamination damage under impact loads that can happen during manufacturing or in service. Indeed, while for metallic media, which are homogeneous and can dissipate energy through yielding, a surface dent will only increase strain hardening locally, for composite materials it is associated with the separation of interior plies due to their intrinsic layered structure, and therefore it must be avoided since it can grow uncontrollably compromising the integrity of the entire structure and leading to severe local degradation of the mechanical properties and, in some cases, sudden critical failures. This weak impact resistance together with the complexity of the failure mechanisms typical of composite systems led in the past decade to the definition of the current design philosophy in aeronautical structures as a "no damage growth" approach, leading to overdesigned structures with high thickness and mainly quasi-isotropic layout based on the assumption of the presence of defects from the outset. Based on these premises, it appears clear the need of a comprehensive solution for the aerospace sector that matches the requirements of lightweight structures with the need for high impact resistance. AEGIS is aimed at the development of a novel hybrid composite material with exceptional energy absorption property which is based on the development of a new "smart" "pseudo non-Newtonian" polymer that can be used in traditional manufacturing processes of plate-like components and complex sandwich panels. The exceptional impact resistance of these new structures is caused by a dynamic stiffening effect given by the transient nature of a large number of crosslink bonds present in the new smart polymer, which forces the polymeric chains to dissipate a large quantity of energy in order to disentangle themselves when subjected to an external load. The development of this new polymeric layer will eliminate the issues associated with moisture absorption of traditional liquid media, allowing its efficient and rapid application on laminated structures as a "smart layer" that can be used as a superficial coating with a minimum effect on the final weight of the structure. Furthermore, due to the higher viscosity of the polymer, it will be possible to intercalate it within a scaffold material in order to develop a "smart core", guarantying ease of manufacturing and increasing the stiffness of the frequency-dependant polymer, leading to the development of novel hybrid sandwich structures. The hybrid composite materials developed in AEGIS will be able to actively respond to specific external stimuli via dynamically enabling the entanglement of the polymeric chains only when the solicitations are above a critical threshold. By combining the exceptional in-plane specific properties of composite materials with the outstanding out-of-plane resistance of the smart polymer, AEGIS will tackle the current limitations of composite components leading to a general increase of the reliability of composite structures that can change the current design approach reducing the safety parameters and optimising the geometries of current components.

Whenever air flows over a commercial aircraft or a high-speed train, a thin layer of turbulence is generated close to the surface of the vehicle. This region of so-called wall-turbulence generates a resistive force known as skin-friction drag which is responsible for more than half of the vehicle's energy consumption. Taming the turbulence in this region reduces the skin-friction drag force, which in turn reduces the vehicle's energy consumption and thereby reduces transport emissions, leading to economic savings and wider health and environmental benefits through improved air quality. To place this into context, just a 3% reduction in the turbulent skin-friction drag force experienced by a single long-range commercial aircraft would save £1.2M in jet fuel per aircraft per year and prevent the annual release of 3,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. There are currently around 23,600 aircraft in active service around the world. Active wall-turbulence control is seen as a key upstream technology currently at very low technology readiness level that has the potential to deliver a step change in vehicle performance. Yet despite this significance and well over 50 years of research, the complexity of wall-turbulence has prevented the realisation of any functional and economical fluid-flow control strategies which can reduce the turbulent skin-friction drag forces of industrial air flows of interest. The EnAble project aims to develop, implement and exploit machine intelligence paradigms to enable a new approach to wall-turbulence control. This new form of intelligent fluid-flow control will be used to develop practical wall-turbulence control strategies that can rapidly and autonomously optimise the aerodynamic surface with minimal power input whilst being adaptive to changes in flow speed. This new capability will open up the opportunity to discover new ways to tame wall-turbulence and exploit the latest drag reduction mechanisms to generate significant levels of turbulent skin-friction drag reduction.

Shape conveys information about a structure that is easily visualized and interpreted, and its dynamic, absolute measurement has significance in applications that span medicine (tracking the movement of minimally invasive instruments during surgery), wind turbines (monitoring turbine blade shape for active load alleviation control), aerospace (monitoring morphing wings, hydraulic hoses and electric cable looms), civil engineering (health monitoring of onshore and offshore structures), rail (monitoring tracks and rolling stock) and the sports and gaming industries (kinematic motion measurements). Direct fibre optic shape sensing (DFOSS) is a disruptive technology that has the potential to have a transformative impact. DFOSS allows the fibre path, as well as the structure to which the fibre is attached, to be followed through space in three dimensions. A key advantage of DFOSS is that the shape is determined directly within the sensing fibre, removing the dependence on strain transfer from the structure and thus the requirement for a model of the structure. Simple surface mounting of the sensing fibre, for example using adhesive tape, is sufficient. The DFOSS approach proposed here is based on Fibre Segment Interferometry, an approach pioneered by Cranfield University, which employs a simple, cost-effective and robust interrogation system exploiting well-proven telecoms laser diodes, detectors and optical fibre components to offer highly sensitive high-speed dynamic curvature measurements. Our initial implementation of the approach is suitable for relative measurement of the shape of small structures (of length upto 5 m), with a sensing gauge length in the range 1cm to 1m and has been successfully trialled on a 5m helicopter rotor rotating at ~400rpm in a ground test on an Airbus H135 helicopter. This proposal aims to solve the scientific challenges involved in extending the capabilities of this DFOSS approach to undertake absolute measurements of shape on larger scale objects, wind turbine blades and aircraft wings (measurement lengths up to 100m, with spatial resolution of the order 1m and data rates of up to 1 kHz). The challenges introduced by the scale of the objects and the anticipated rates of change of shape will require significant innovation, driving a radical evolution of the measurement configuration while maintaining the low cost and robust nature of the approach. Innovation is also required in the processing of the long lengths of multicore optical fibre at the heart of the approach and in the means for its deployment with a known alignment. The design and development of the approach will be informed by real measurement challenges in wind energy and aerospace, with the aim to demonstrate its use on the wing of Boeing 737, for example measuring the response to the jacking of the wing, and on a wind turbine, measuring blade shape changes and blade tip displacement, undertaking vibration characterisation of the blade, and damage location identification on a faulty blade.

The ultimate goal of the project is to improve CNI resilience in the UK by enabling timely and efficient incident response. To achieve this, this project will deliver a Framework for creating Risk-Informed Metrics-enriched Playbooks for Critical National Infrastructure (FRIMP4CNI). We propose to approach incident response playbooks in a fundamentally different way. First, playbooks in this project are integrated into core CNI processes affected by an incident, showing how enacting a particular response affects core processes as well as interdependent processes. Second, our playbooks address more than technical actions, they look at aspects beyond technology, e.g. operational response, issues related to staff availability and costs, reporting process, political and communication response. Third, playbooks are risk-informed because each playbook has an associated risk model; and fourth, they are enriched with business-driven multifaceted metrics which reflect the changes that an incident inflicts on a core process. Fifth feature is that our playbooks are optimal: an optimisation algorithm is applied to a set of alternative response strategies to identify the optimal response playbook for each case. A combination of the features listed above makes our approach unique and allows our playbooks to serve both as an action guide enabling improved cybersecurity incident response and as a decision support tool at the Board level. The project has three key objectives: 1. Create an empirically-grounded tool-supported actionable framework for developing bespoke risk-informed metrics-enriched cybersecurity playbooks tailored to the challenges of enhancing resilience in CNI by adopting and modelling incident response best practices in a format of integrated playbooks. 2. Design, implement and test software tools supporting the aspects of the framework related to process modelling, risk assessment and response strategy optimisation, and to integrate them into a comprehensive CNI Playbook Design Toolset. The project will deliver the full technology stack required to develop optimal risk-informed and metric-driven playbooks. Tool-support will increase the intention to use and facilitate faster adoption of the framework in practice. 3. Evaluate the framework using existing testbeds at the participating universities and industry partners, and via focus groups and workshops with industry partners and individual domain experts with a broad range of backgrounds and in varying roles from network engineers to ICS operators to Board members to policy makers. It is essential to conduct extensive evaluation with practitioners to ensure that the framework and tools are effective, accessible and fulfil the intended purposes for each group of stakeholders.

The aerospace sector, in its ongoing quest to improve aircraft efficiencies, is considering more flexible and finely tuned aero-structural systems. One such approach is to increase the aspect ratio (AR) of the wings, i.e. increase the span such that the wings are more slender. Such higher aspect ratio wings offer the prospect of improved aerodynamic efficiency for civil and military transport aircraft and for certain types of unmanned aircraft, such as those used for high-altitude long-endurance sensing, environmental monitoring, etc. High AR wings are typically more flexible than conventional designs in order to minimise structural mass. This in turn can increase the complexity of the dynamic responses of the wings themselves and the aircraft as a whole. These responses comprise different modes of motion, associated with airframe aeroelasticity (which refers to the interaction between airframe aerodynamic, structural and inertial properties) and with the so-called 'rigid-body' motions (representing the behaviour of the air vehicle independent of any elastic/flexibility effects) and flight control modes. In design and analysis of conventional (more rigid) aircraft, the aeroelastic modes are typically at higher frequencies than the flight dynamics and control modes and are usually able to be well modeled using linear methods; in such air vehicles the extent and complexity of any coupling with the flight dynamics behaviour is low. However, the more flexible the airframe, the stronger the likely interaction (coupling) between all these modes. Furthermore, the influence of nonlinearity increases - in particular geometric nonlinearity in high AR wings, along with other potential nonlinear characteristics such as in the aerodynamics and control system. Methods for numerical modeling of highly flexible aircraft, incorporating the necessary coupling and nonlinear phenomena, have been extensively researched and developed in recent years. Validating or calibrating these predictive methods via controlled experiments is, however, a challenge - usually addressed by testing a wing as a cantilever supported rigidly at its root in a wind tunnel. There is very limited scope in existing test rigs for extending the experimental approaches to accommodate the degrees of freedom needed to capture the coupling between the flight dynamics and control modes and the aeroelastic modes. Such rigs that do exist are usually intended for limited motion amplitudes in order to test for onset of aeroelastic instability, rather than being aimed at large-amplitude wing bending, torsion and model motions to exploit or explore nonlinearity. This proposal introduces a new experimental concept that allows this coupled behaviour to be investigated in a controlled wind tunnel environment. It entails a challenging extension to the current testing approach for the University of Bristol's novel 5-degree-of-freedom dynamic test rig and the design of suitable flexible actuated and instrumented models. The procedure will build on previous rigid-body test accomplishments and will extend earlier work on active rig control to ensure that coupled dynamic phenomena seen in the wind tunnel match those of free flight as closely as possible. A successful outcome of this exploratory research could launch the development of this new test technique towards implementation in industrial wind tunnels. It will also assess the feasibility of extending the capability to incorporate load alleviation control in the flexible wings. Furthermore, it will generate enhanced types of data to evaluate the predictive ability of nonlinear computational modelling techniques and to adapt or calibrate them to measured behaviours. In this way, the proposed research offers the prospect of substantially improved wind tunnel capability to support design and analysis of future advanced aircraft wings/airframes featuring complex dynamic interactions.