Airborne

The £40m consortium, funded by a £20.0M commitment from industry and a £19.6M commitment from the UK Government via ATI, will focus on greater adoption of composite technologies today, the industrialization of new technologies, as well as accelerating aerospace production rates to meet future high-volume requirements. Assyst Bullmer, Airborne, Cobham Mission Systems Wimborne, Cygnet Texkimp, Des Composites, FAR-UK Ltd, Hexcel Composites, Hive Composites, LMAT, Loop Technology, McLaren Automotive, the National Composites Centre, Rafinex, Sigmatex (UK) and Solvay Composite Materials will join GKN Aerospace in the consortium with collaboration and investment support from Axillium Research. “Airborne is delighted to be part of the ASCEND project which aligns perfectly with our scale-up plans in aerospace, automotive and future air mobility, and will enable significant investment in the UK organisation to develop next generation automation and digitalisation technology for dry and impregnated composite material handling” John Pritchard, President Civil Airframe GKN Aerospace said: Full press release by GKN Aerospace – GKN Aerospace and partners launch ASCEND to accelerate high volume composite technologies: https://www.gknaerospace.com/en/newsroom/news-releases/2021/gkn-aerospace-and-partners-launch-ascend-to-accelerate-high-volume-composite-technologies/ Press release: £90 million boost to fire up aerospace manufacturing – Investment in five projects could secure 1400 jobs across the UK by Governement: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/90-million-boost-to-fire-up-aerospace-manufacturing

The grant enables the development of ultra-efficient propeller and rotor blades, specifically for hybrid and electric aircraft, Urban Air Mobility and drones. The development of ‘smart rotors’ is an important step towards a more sustainable aviation, less emissions and less noise pollution, as well as parcel delivery via drones and of course will also support the further development of Urban Air Mobility (UAM). Rotors can be either the blades of a propeller intended for the propulsion of aircraft or the blades of a rotor intended for the propulsion of helicopters and drones. The project is part of the Next Aviation Field lab that focuses on the development, testing and implementation of sustainable aviation technology in a real airport environment at Rotterdam The Hague Airport.

I am very excited to announce our Airborne on Air Webinar Series 2021. Each webinar we will be diving into the Future of Composites and will try to answer questions regarding our challenges as an industry, like sustainability. Arris Composites is a new, exciting start-up from California, having developed a breakthrough technology ‘Additive Molding’ that enables the manufacturing of complex, organic designs in composites in high volume in thermoplastic composite.

Jeroen Broekhuijsen of TNO heard one of these remarkably often and from different quarters: the question of how to extract data from machines, sensors, devices and other hardware and then store, interpret and apply it. With support from the SMITZH innovation program, TNO and fieldlab DFC set to work together to find a solution. When Jeroen was making the first plans for an investigation into a data platform, three South Holland manufacturing companies came to SMITZH with exactly the same question. In this field lab you get a good picture of the technology: with the specialist machines and computers that are here and our explanation, you watch live for yourselves how data is collected and appears in the dashboard.