105793Fibre Steering for Lightweight & Cost-efficient Aero-structuresClosedSmall Business Research InitiativeInnovate UKThe aerospace industry has pioneered the use of composites due to their strong incentive to reduce the weight of aircrafts, driven both by economic (reduced fuel consumption) and environmental benefits (reduced emissions). To maintain its competitive position in the aerospace market, the composites industry faces two major challenges: (i) improve the structural efficiency of composites and, (ii) reduce their production cost and increase their production rate.Current composite structures are optimised by stacking straight-fibre layers at different orientations. As structures have complex load paths, this approach often leads to overdesigned components. It is more efficient to design with layers of curved fibres, changing their orientation constantly to follow the load path (fibre-steering). Fibre-steering expands drastically the design space for composites and can improve all aspects of structural performance, such as weight, bearing strength and aeroelastic tailoring, as well as the production cost and rate, which are all key interests in the global aerospace industry.Continuous Tow Shearing (CTS) is a fibre-steering technology, UK patented, that can steer carbon fibre tapes along curved paths without defects, which allows the manufacture of defect-free carbon fibre composite components of complex geometry and the optimisation of their performance. This technology can have a significant impact on future composite products in aerospace, automotive and wind energy sectors where the structural efficiency, the reduction of production cost and the increase of manufacturing rate are becoming more and more critical.This project will demonstrate a step-change improvement in producing lightweight and cost-efficient composite structures for the global aerospace industry based on a carbon fibre tape laying machine with the CTS capabilities. The objective of this project is to demonstrate the viability of a cost-efficient manufacturing process for composite aero-structures. The project will evaluate the structural performance and highlight and compare the production advantages of the CTS process compared to the state-of-the-art.