Latest News April 2020

Please read on for our latest news April 2020, discussing how we are dealing with the COVID-19 virus, the latest developments within our divisions and the addition of new staff…

Rob Adams joins us!

Rob Adams joins our team as one of our senior consulting engineers, boasting extensive experience in aerospace engineering, having spent many years in a senior role within Rolls-Royce plc. Rob brings an in-depth knowledge in the field of gas turbine development and testing, thus bolstering our technical capabilities when dealing with complex aero-engine projects.

Rob will be joining our team as a remote worker based in the Derbyshire area and will be supporting our advanced engineering division.

COVID-19 Virus Update

In order to protect our employees, customers and the rest of the UK, all of our employees are now set up and working from home, with all new PC’s and software. Our ban on all travel remains in place unless risk assessed and vital.

In order to ensure our agility in providing swift and accurate responses to customers we have upgraded our remote meeting capabilities, mainly through WebEx and Skype, to allow our communication channels to continue un-interrupted.

We would like to thank the goodwill of software company’s such as SIEMENS and PTC for providing extra software licenses, enabling our continual focus on the job at hand whilst working from home. We would also like to thank the tireless efforts of our IT support company, ITS, for their assistance at this time.

CFD & Advanced Analysis Division

Martha Cooper, Divisional Head, reports: “Despite the team working from home, we have been able to keep all our analysis machines running at full capacity, due to our excellent remote working capabilities.” She continued: “We have been able to make good use of our additional software licences, allowing us to further parallelise our CFD analyses, running larger and more complex analyses more quickly, to respond to our customers’ most urgent requirements.“

The CFD & advanced analysis team have been benchmarking some of our more advanced techniques against industry standards, ensuring further confidence in all our methods. The team are working on improved methods to integrate results from our thermal analyses with structural FEA analyses. They have also been looking closely at fluid-structure interaction, estimating the forces on a structure which result from vortex shedding, and working on some finely-detailed boundary layer models.

Advanced Engineering Division

Simon Apsley, Divisional Head, reports: “With the addition of extra software licenses, our advanced engineering team are all set-up to work from home and continue to engage with complicated design challenges for our customers.” He added: “Complex build sequence and manufacturing considerations are of utmost importance here, with the team working closely with our manufacturing partners. Regular Design For Manufacture (DFM) reviews help to ensure optimum designs are achieved that meet the individual needs of our clients.”

Our advanced engineering team are continuing to provide creative engineering solutions to our aero-engine development customers, at the forefront of engineering technology. From the inclusion of complex design features to protect materials at the extreme end of temperature capabilities, to innovative design and analysis of lightweight composite engine intakes. The team is able to draw from many years of varied experience to provide a complete “one-stop-shop” solution to our customers.

Advanced Composites Division

This month, the Composite’s Division has been active in the design and development of a Kevlar® hinge for a flexible aero component. Speaking about the project, Divisional Head, Matthew Jeffreys said: “We have a customer with an interesting requirement for a composite component that has to flex under continuous cyclic loading and also seal aerodynamically.

Our proposed solution came directly from my time in F1, when we used to partially seal the front wing endplate skirts to the ground, using a co-cured but flexible CFRP and Kevlar® prepreg mix. Testing is now underway to develop the concept further for this specific application and ensure the customer’s demands are met.”