Latest News March 2022
Welcome to the Frewer Engineering latest news March 2022.
This newsletter reports on our company restructure, new staff members and some interesting new capability videos now posted on our YouTube Channel.
We hope you enjoy catching up on us!
Restructuring for Continued Growth
Frewer Engineering recently restructured to provide a more versatile and agile resource pool to our customers, and we’re already seeing the benefits. This was implemented in response to customer and market demands for higher levels of delivery-focus, as well as material-agnostic design development for our customers.
Our customers have greater access than ever to our existing Composites design and analysis specialists, and new additions who bring experience from previous projects / organisations. A recent case study involved our programming experts, who previously sat outside the composites team, developing bespoke software to rapidly optimise a complex composite structure thanks to our enhanced agility and access to the relevant resource. However, the backbone of our Composites team remains unchanged, with Peter Frewer as Chief Engineer and Chris Brown as Design Manager, providing decades of governance experience over the expanding team.
Blade Health Monitoring
Our extensive experience in gas turbine development means we are experts in facilitating accurate monitoring of blade health via the optimised positioning of strain gauges. Our engineers have developed highly efficient algorithms which account for key factors such as blade modal shapes and disc modal diameters to locate appropriate positions for strain gauges. Now packaged into an in-house application, this service seamlessly integrates into our full-suite of modal and rotordynamic analyses geared for computational blade life and health assessment, an essential precursor to providing optimal instrumentation positioning for our customers’ practical test rigs.
New Additions to the Frewer Team
All of us at Frewer are very excited to welcome two accomplished young engineers, Benjamin Luxmoore & Harry Buttle to the team. Both additions bring unique skills, from practical design experience in the workshop, to advanced stress analysis modelling. Notably, Ben brings with him experience of the full turnkey design and make of UAV test rigs assessing the performance of wing spars, using strength and stiffness data to inform structural design iteration. Harry also brings strengths in prototype development & design with composite materials, using stress analysis to create optimised lightweight flight components which are DFM sympathetic for the advanced composite materials being used.
Novel Composite Solutions
Composite materials are highly applicable to aerospace, renewable energy generation and any scenario where high strength to weight ratio requirements render metallic alternatives inadequate. In aerospace particularly, novel solutions are often required to tackle challenging environments with unique temperature, deflection and weight requirements. Frewer has utilised technologies such as cyanate ester resin systems and co-moulded carbon-Kevlar components to meet demanding customer requirements. Using in-house developed translators from CAD/CAM to FEA, we are even developing more efficient modelling methods specifically for filament winding technologies, to provide more efficient and accurate analyses than ever for composite structures. Our agile and cutting-edge approach to composite design & analysis allows us to stay abreast of the latest technological advancements in novel and environmentally sympathetic resin and fibre systems, catalysed by our close relationships with academic partners and industry leading manufacturers.
Additive Manufacturing Capabilities
The additive manufacturing capability at Frewer Engineering allows for the rapid prototyping and assessment of novel concepts through physical modelling. The ability to design, print and analyse designs in physical forms allows our engineers to reduce design risk with respect to assembly, space constraints and manufacture, whilst improving communication with clients. We have used our 3D printing capability extensively in the design of novel mechanisms, allowing our engineers to bring designs to life, locate problems faster, increase design iteration rate and reduce overall design cost. To keep up to date with our latest videos subscribe to our YouTube channel here.
Frewer Fundraising!
Frewer Engineering is supporting one of our engineers, Kristian Mahon in his endeavours to raise money for the Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF)! MRF is a charity dedicated to developing treatments, vaccines, providing support and raising awareness for Meningitis and Septicemia in the UK and beyond. Kristian is climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in support of the MRF, & to help his fundraising he is also ‘virtually’ walking from Lands End to John O’Groats, the full length of the UK! Please support Kristian (pictured above, finally walking in some good weather) by donating to the link below and help the Meningitis Research Foundation wipe out Meningitis by 2030.
