Strategy

UK Composites Research Challenge Landscape (CiRCL)

The Hub’s roadmapping activities describes a number of strategic activities which will provide a cornerstone for future Hub activity, including thematic funding calls, opportunities for collaboration and strategic direction. 

The Hub plays a key role in funding fundamental composites manufacturing research in the UK. This is done in line with our five research themes and two grand challenges.  However, in order to ensure that we are funding the most critical and needed research we need to remain up to date with research trends. Our challenge landscape map is written by academics for academics with endorsement from industrial partners and other stakeholders, collating low TRL-challenges which act as a barrier to step-changes in composites manufacturing.  We hope that this will also enthuse researchers, and inspire them to solve some of the most pressing problems in this sector.

To find out more, please click on the bubbles in the diagram below to highlight the research challenges that have been identified for each technology. The severity of each challenge has been rated from 1 to 10, which is indicated by the size of the circle. Each research challenge has been categorised according to 1) Infrastructure and Environment, 2) Machine Hardware, 3) Material Format, 4) Material Deposition and 5) Part Applicability and Geometry, indicated by the colour of the circle

Hub Research Landscape

A series of synergy workshops have been hosted by the Hub to develop and summarise interactions between Hub projects.

The aims of the workshop were to:

• Improve researchers understanding of their role within the Hub
• Strengthen project synergy between existing/previous Hub projects
• Encourage Project leads and Hub members to identify new opportunities for collaboration

The output from the workshop can be viewed here:

The output from the Research Challenge Landscape activity can be viewed here: Roadmapping-Outputs-Deposition-Technology.pdf

The output from the Research Challenge Landscape – Composites Sustainability activity can be viewed here: Roadmapping-Outputs-Sustainability-Challenges.pdf

UK Equipment List

An equipment register for 20 academic institutions has been collated using Kit-Catalogue and can be accessed via the following link: https://cimcompkit.nottingham.ac.uk

A login and password ID is required to access the site and this can be requested by contacting EN-INFO-CIMCOMP@exmail.nottingham.ac.uk