multidisciplinary consortium from Europe and the UK

Our experience, know-how and expertise are built on a history of developing and manufacturing complete aircraft. Since the foundation of Saab in 1937, thousands of aircraft have left our hangars, including the Saab 340, the Saab 2000 and Gripen – the world’s first new-generation fighter in operation. Today, our knowledge, expertise and global reach translates into state-of-the-art aerostructures that are cost-efficient, robust and safe. We use our knowledge, experience and innovative thinking to create cost-efficient solutions that will further improve our product and the customer value we provide.

In 1997, Saab made the decision to focus its commercial aeronautics business on supplying structural components to major aircraft manufacturers. Today we are a tier-1 partner to Boeing and Airbus and our attention is on developing wing structures, movables and doors. Over the years, we have established close working relationships with our customers and are considered a key and strategic collaborator in the development of their aircraft.

Contact Person:

Kenneth Karlsson

Director Business Development R&T

Email: kenneth.z.karlsson@saabgroup.com

Telephone: +46 734 18 26 38

Loiretech designs and manufactures complete sets of tooling for large and complex composite, thermoplastic and metallic parts, from forming or moulding to inspection operations. Our main customers belong to the commercial aerospace, automotive, defence and energies industries. Loiretech holding company is situated in the West of France, close to Nantes in the Jules VERNE Manufacturing Valley which combines the skills of aerospace structures manufacturers, composites materials suppliers, High-level Schools of Science and the largest European technical centre dedicated to advance manufacturing technologies.

The company was founded in 1988 and started its activities in the field of prototype moulds and parts for the automotive industry. In the early 2000's Loiretech came to the high precision milling fixtures market and to the aerospace composite industry and reached a leading position in Europe in the early 2010th in composite molds manufacturing as well as in automated assembling and trimming fixtures. In 2013 Loiretech decided to create a subsidiary in North America and founded in joint venture with the Canadian company Composite VCI, Loiretech Canada located in Saint Lin Laurentides close to Montreal. Loiretech has increased in 2015 its capacity in metallic tooling manufacturing by an external growth operation and is now able to produce complete sets of tooling for a large range of activities.

Contact Person:

Rémi CHAUVEAU

Ingénieur Recherche & Innovation / Research & Innovation Engineer

E: remi.chauveau@loiretech.com

Mobile: +33 (0) 7 60 51 80 79

Phone: +33 (0) 2 30 08 01 76

Brunel University London has been highly successful in creating an industrial innovation research resources, named Brunel Innovation Centre (BIC) and Brunel Compsoites Innvation centre, which sits between the knowledge base and industry, supporting partners in industry to transfer academic research into industrial application. The principal mission of these department is to establish an internally renowned research centre offering high quality research in an innovative environment, aiming to attract outstanding talents and focus on acoustic wave and allied technologies covering materials research, a range of ‘smart’ artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, plus sensors and electronics suites for autonomous inspection.

Contact Person:

Mihalis Kazilas

Reader & Director of BCC

E: mihalis.kazilas@brunel.ac.uk

ETS is a young SME, offering expertise and innovative solutions in the areas of industrial measurement/automation and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). The philosophy of ETS is to design and integrate application-specific solutions with high flexibility in customization, that may meet the specific needs and requirements of the customer. Making use of advanced, state of the art, signal processing solutions, ETS produces products of expanded capabilities that exploit to the maximum the measured data information.

Contact Person:

Aggelos Poulimenos

Aggelos.poulimenos@ets-co.gr

Tel: ++30 210 6611104

Cranfield University is one of Europe’s largest academic centres for strategic and applied research and development. The postgraduate-only University operates on two campuses, with some 3000 students in the fields of engineering, aeronautics, manufacturing, materials, sustainability, defence studies and management. The mission of the University is the application of world class science and technology to industry, commerce and the public sector and results in annual research income in excess of 100M EUR.

The work within FLEX is carried out in the Enhanced Structures and Composites Centre within the School of Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing. The Centre has established a leading reputation specialising in polymer composites manufacturing, process simulation and optimisation, thermosetting cure modelling and monitoring, though thickness reinforcement, hybrid composite-metallic joining techniques. The Centre includes the Cranfield Composites Manufacturing Laboratory which focuses on the investigation and development of novel processing technology for lightweight structures and has expertise and capability to undertake many of the processes associated with advanced composites manufacturing including but not limited to autoclaving, resin transfer moulding, resin infusion, press moulding, tufting and z-pinning. The Centre is fully equipped in terms of material characterisation with thermal analysis (DSC, TMA, DMA, Rheometer, TGA) and in-house equipment for thermal conductivity and shrinkage measurements during the cure. In addition, the Centre has access to standard FE packages used for the simulation of thermal, mechanical and electrical effects and to two High Performance Computing systems.

Contact Person:

Alex Skordos

Senior Lecturer in Composites Process Science School of Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing

Building 88 F14/C88.1.14

Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL

a.a.skordos@cranfield.ac.uk

T: +44 (0)1234 750111 x2811

www.cranfield.ac.uk

Cranfield Composites on Twitter

Established in Cambridge, UK in 1946 and with several facilities across the globe, TW (www.twi-global.com) is one of Europe’s foremost independent research and technology organisations, employing 740 scientists, technologists, administrative and support staff world-wide (523 in the UK and Europe) and with annual (2017) group turnover of £60 million. TWI works across all industry sectors with expertise in key aspects of materials, materials joining, structural integrity, static and dynamic testing and Non Destructive Testing (NDT) and Non Destructive Evaluation (NDE) and has representation on over 100 standards committees.

www.twi-global.com