Developing 3D woven textile composites in the UK aerospace industry

The Breakthrough Aerospace Materials (BAM) project commenced in March 2016 with funding from Innovate UK.

This three-year Aerospace Technology Institute project looks to advance the manufacturing techniques and simulation of three-dimensional (3D) textiles in the UK and to make them commercially available to the aerospace industry.

Currently, the use of 3D textile composites is held back by a lack of analysis techniques that are able to accurately predict weave architectures and the resulting processing and structural performance.

Led by Sigmatex, BAM joins UK-based aerospace companies BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce along with ESI, MSC Software, Antich & Sons, M Wright & Sons, Teledyne CML Composites and three UK universities involved in 3D woven technology – Nottingham, Manchester and Bristol.

The expected benefits of the project will include structural lightweighting, reduced manufacturing and inherent assembly costs.

For the full story, see the July 2016 edition of MobileTex. Not a subscriber? Sign up HERE