High Performance Ductile Composite Technology (HiPerDuCT)

Conventional composites such as carbon fibre reinforced plastics have outstanding mechanical properties: high strength and stiffness, low weight, and low susceptibility to fatigue and corrosion. Composites are truly the materials of the future, their properties can be tailored to particular applications and capabilities for sensing, changing shape or self healing can also be included. Their use is rising exponentially, continuing to replace or augment traditional materials. A key example is the construction of new large aircraft, such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, mainly from carbon fibre composites. At the same time, there is rapid expansion of composite use in applications such as wind turbine blades, sporting goods and civil engineering infrastructure.Despite this progress, a fundamental and as yet unresolved limitation of current composites is their inherent brittleness. Failure is usually sudden and catastrophic, with little or no warning or capacity to carry load afterwards. A related problem is their susceptibility to impact damage, which can drastically reduce the strength, without any visible warning. Structures that look fine can fail suddenly at loads much lower than expected. As a result complex maintenance procedures are required and a significantly greater safety margin than for other materials. Our vision is to create a paradigm shift by realising a new generation of high performance composites that overcome the key limitation of conventional composites: their inherent lack of ductility. We will design, manufacture and evaluate a range of composite systems with the ability to fail gradually, undergoing large deformations whilst still carrying load. Energy will be absorbed by ductile or pseudo-ductile response, analogous to yielding in metals, with strength and stiffness maintained, and clear evidence of damage. This will eliminate the need for very low design strains to cater for barely visible impact damage, providing a step change in composite performance, as well as overcoming the intrinsic brittleness that is a major barrier to their wider adoption. These materials will provide greater reliability and safety, together with reduced design and maintenance requirements, and longer service life. True ductility will allow new manufacturing methods, such as press forming, that offer high volumes and greater flexibility.To achieve such an ambitious outcome will require a concerted effort to develop new composite constituents and exploit novel architectures. The programme will scope, prioritise, develop, and combine these approaches, to achieve High Performance Ductile Composite Technology (HiPerDuCT).

This highly ambitious, multi-disciplinary, and innovative programme is designed to move polymer composite structures in a fundamentally new direction. The goal is not only to improve performance and reduce cost, but crucially to introduce composites to a wide range of new applications, where use is currently limited by design complexity, processing challenges, ultimate failure mechanism, or maintenance demands. Relevant sectors include, aerospace, offshore, renewables, and high performance sports, but will extend to consumer goods, conventional automotive and other ground transport, civil engineering and the chemical industry. A range of stakeholders will benefit: Companies working in the composites field, either supplying materials or using them to manufacture structures, will gain access to new technology, either through directly licensing intellectual property developed during the programme, or through subsequent co-development projects. Technology transfer will be facilitated by specialist teams at Imperial (Innovations Ltd) and Bristol (Research & Enterprise Development), who have extensive experience in balancing the need to protect inventions while encouraging commercial exploitation. Industrial partners will thus gain new capabilities allowing them to develop new products, leading to a competitive advantage, and ultimately, UK wealth creation. The UK is home to a number of major composites companies, who maintain their world-leading position, by embracing opportunities for innovation. Several such companies will play an active role in the programme grant, helping to build a UK research network in the emerging field of ductile composites. This grouping will foster future collaborations, encouraging UK R&D efforts, as well as attracting inward international investment. In addition, there are a variety of manufacturing companies, for example, in civil engineering, the automotive and consumer goods sectors, who do not routinely use composites. The simpler processing and service requirements of HiPerDuCT, will provide a fundamentally new materials opportunity; the UK's internationally-recognised industrial design community will thus acquire a new capability to create further innovative products. At the same time, the extended use of composite materials will engage fresh academic interest, in fields ranging from chemistry to mechanical engineering, that will support the uptake and development of new designs and applications. More generally, society will benefit from the emergence of HiPerDuCT that provide improved performance, safety, & environmental sustainability in a variety of contexts. Ductile composites intrinsically improve safety by avoiding catastrophic failure, and minimising inspection requirements. The associated weight reduction will offer improved fuel efficiency or range in transport applications, while wind turbines will be more structurally efficient and benefit from reduced maintenance requirements, particularly offshore. By simplifying processing and improving lifetime, HiPerDuCT will offer reduced waste; some embodiments may enable direct recycling or reuse, a long-term composite goal. Through commercialisation activities, the academic institutions will benefit from additional revenue that they invest to bring forward other new technologies, through Imperial Innovations and Bristol RED. Composite materials are a high profile and widely monitored technology. With the success of the project, the UK will be making a clear and valuable contribution to their global implementation, which will enhance our reputation in the area, and help to attract both further investment and interactions with world-leading organisations and individuals. The program is aligned with stated UK objectives to realign the economy towards advanced manufacturing. It provides an opportunity to highlight the contribution of Science and Engineering towards these goals, both with the public and within government.