Morris explains how GE came to embrace 3D printing

By: STEPHEN TRIMBLE, published in flightglobal.com, Sep 24, 2014

GE Aviation has spent decades building a reputation as a materials trailblazer in the engines business.

The Cincinnati-based engine maker has consistently turned to new and sometimes exotic materials to solve engineering problems. As modern engines have driven up bypass and compression ratios to become more fuel efficient, GE has introduced carbonfibre fan blades to reduce the weight of wider fans and integrated titanium aluminide turbine blades and ceramic matrix composite (CMC) turbine shrouds to survive in higher temperatures.

Despite this reliable track record, industry peers still seemed caught off guard and unguardedly sceptical about GE’s sudden and deep plunge into the emerging world of additive manufacturing. Like the widespread introduction of composite materials in the 1990s, additive manufacturing inserts both new materials and a new production process far removed from industrial age practices like forging and casting.

The speed and scale of GE’s embrace of 3D printed parts seems unprecedented. It took the industry decades of experimentation before allowing composite materials to be used in load-bearing structures, starting with the rudder of the Airbus A310 and increasing gradually over the next four decades.

Even as most aerospace companies still limit 3D printers to rapid prototyping shops and one-off plastic components, GE is opening a 9,290m2 (100,000ft2) factory in Alabama to produce a key component in every CFM International Leap engine, with annual production of up to 40,000 pieces a year. The same factory and another facility recently erected in Italy also could produce an even more numerous part on the GE9X, GE’s highly prized power source for the Boeing 777X family.

GE

Most aerospace industry officials agree that additive manufacturing will be revolutionary, but not for at least 20 years. GE is revolutionising its manufacturing system now, with billions of orders at stake on every Boeing 737, Comac C919 and CFM-powered Airbus A320 in the backlog.

Although it appeared that GE emerged as the industry’s lonely champion of additive manufacturing overnight, the real story unfolded over several decades, with a starring role played by an industrial neighbour in Cincinnati with no background in the aerospace manufacturing business.

Greg Morris comes from a Cincinnati family that presided over a large steel distribution company since the mid-19th century. The family business was sold, however, in the early 1990s, leaving Morris with plenty of capital and nothing to do.

Over the next 20 years, the company he founded with two others – Morris Technologies – would help transform additive manufacturing from a niche technique to make one-off prototypes into a mainstream production system for some of the world’s most advanced aircraft engines.

Morris Technologies began in 1994 with the acquisition of a 3D Systems SLA-250, the first 3D laser printer on the market. The system was advanced for its time, but still limited to building fragile materials.

“At that point the resins were okay but they not robust at all,” Morris says. “In fact, you could drop it from here to the table and it would likely break.”

Despite the limitations, such early 3D printers transformed rapid prototyping operations. For the first time, an engineer with a 3D computer-aided design (CAD) drawing could make parts from scratch within hours, without the need to order raw materials, invest in new tooling and tie up machinists.

Moving from rapid prototyping into mainstream production would take nearly a decade of further development. Even as 3D printers became more powerful and the resins more robust, such systems were still comparatively unsophisticated compared to mainstream production tools like computer numerical control machines.

Not only would such a system have to precisely manufacture thousands of parts with close tolerances reliably and affordably, the machines would also need to monitor themselves, alerting operators of anything unexpected. Ideally, the machine would sense small fluctuations in the power supply to the laser, or perhaps minute changes in atmospheric pressure inside the printing chamber.

Obtaining machines with such potential became possible about a decade ago, but only with significant alterations. On a visit in 2003 to a UK facility of a key client – Cincinnati-based Proctor & Gamble – Morris discovered the direct metal laser sintering machine made by Munich-based EOS.

At the time, Morris Technologies was still a start-up company with a broad range of clients spanning GE’s rapid prototyping shop, medical devices and consumer products. Buying the EOS machine, however, was still a big risk. Their intention was to acquire the machine and modify it substantially to suit a more sophisticated clientele, and thereby void the warranty and the guarantee for EOS support on the machine.

“We went over to Germany, we researched it and then we took the plunge,” Morris recalls.

That decision would set in motion a path to make highly sophisticated direct parts using exotic metals, such as the cobalt-chromium discs at the base of an engine fuel nozzle, where tiny perforations and channels blend kerosene and highly compressed air in a precisely calibrated mixture before it is ignited in the combustion chamber.

By 2005, Morris Technologies had upgraded the direct laser sintering machine from a carbon dioxide-based laser to a fibre-optic laser. The more powerful laser allowed the company to start working with more exotic metals, including cobalt-chromium, Inconel 718, Inconel 626 and various titanium and aluminium alloys.

Other modifications focused on controlling the environment inside the printing chamber. Consumers can buy 3D printers with a guarantee of 10,000 oxygen parts per million inside the printing chamber. The best manufacturing machines available on the market offer better quality, limiting oxygen to 2,000 parts per million. The Morris Technologies machines are rated to maintain an atmosphere of 50 parts per million.

Other manufactures are using 3D printed parts as support structures in engines, such as brackets. It is also commonly used for serpentine-like ventilation ducts in aircraft. Some industry officials, such as Pratt & Whitney vice-president of technology and environment Alan Epstein, have challenged the “hype” over additive manufacturing techniques, arguing that the technology will not be ready for widespread application for another 20 years.

But Morris argues that the naysayers simply have not been working on the technology as long or made the same investments in improving the commercially available machines.

“It’s very expensive. It takes millions of dollars to develop your material curves,” Morris says. “We have probably a much better understanding of the technology and the material characteristics than others who have either gone down that road or haven’t been playing with the technology as long as we have.”

In 2012, GE acquired Morris Technologies shortly after revealing that each of the 19 fuel nozzles inside each Leap engine would be manufactured with a cobalt-chrome tip.

The design of a fuel nozzle made by the Morris Technologies machines presented challenges. Engineers assessed a “debit” on the low- and high-cycle fatigue properties of the original part, a characteristic caused by using laser sintering to produce it, rather than a casting.

“What our engineers and designers did is they designed around that debit, and that’s the beauty of what you can do with this technology,” Morris says. “Instead of letting a debit… cause a roadblock they simply designed around it.”

If GE’s strategy works, this is only the beginning. Additive manufacturing opens doors to more than just new designs and new materials, Morris says. It also allows GE’s engineers to design something like a turbine blade very differently, with several layers of material optimised for their location on the blade. Right now, a turbine blade is made with a single material, even though blending different materials could be more effective.

“What if in a high-pressure turbine blade instead of it being one material I can vary my materials in the future, and I can use one material here, blend in the next material and at the tip I get an abrasion resistant material,” Morris says. “That’s coming. That’s work that GE is on the leading edge of understanding fundamentally how to do.”

CSeries flight ends 100-day grounding

By: STEPHEN TRIMBLE, published in flightglobal.com, Sep 8, 2014

Bombardier  returned the CSeries aircraft to the air on 7 September after a 100-day grounding with FTV-2 taking off from the company’s facility at Mirabel airport in Quebec.

The flight began at 18:10 and landed before sundown about 30min later.

“We are pleased to see the CSeries aircraft back in the air,” says Rob Dewar, Bombardier’ vice-president leading the CSeries programme.

None of the four aircraft in the CSeries flight test fleet have flown since 29 May, the day a low-pressure turbine stage failed in a PW1500G engine installed on FTV-1 during a ground test.

P&W traced the failure to a flaw in the engine’s main oil lubrication system. The oil system dedicated to the engine’s unique fan drive gear system was not at fault, according to Bombardier and P&W.

About six weeks after the grounding began P&W first proposed a series of modification to Bombardier, but the companies negotiated for several weeks on the final design.

Details of the modifications have not been disclosed. Bombardier says, however, that the changes will have no impact on the fuel burn, noise and thrust goals for the engine.

Despite the 100-day hiatus, Bombardier also expects no change to the programme’s overall schedule. First delivery of the 110-seat CS100 remains pegged for the second half of 2015, a window that opens in nine months. The first delivery of the CS300 should follow about six months later, Dewar says.

Return to flight of FTV-2 will be followed shortly by FTV-4, Dewar says. FTV-1 is in the final stages of repairs for the damages sustained in the 29 May test incident, including punctures of the aircraft’s carbonfibre wing. It will return to flight after FTV-4. Return to flight of FTV-3 will happen during the “fall” season, Dewar says.

FTV-5, the first test aircraft with a completed interior, remains in final assembly. Bombardier expects to complete first flight of FTV-5 by the end of the year.

Think ink: Airbus revolutionises how an airline’s livery is applied to jetliners

By: Marcel van Leeuwen, published in aviationnews.eu, Sep 9, 2014

 

The application of complex, large-scale liveries on aircraft presents a considerable challenge – particularly as airlines develop increasingly artistic and complex ways to express their identities.

However, the difficulties may become a thing of the past thanks to a new method currently being developed by Airbus – which employs direct inkjet printing to deliver a broad range of production and operational improvements.

The method was developed by engineers from Airbus’ A320 Family paint shop in Hamburg, Germany, and is able to reproduce any livery design – be it a photographic motif, modern art or other complex patterns – faster and more efficiently than traditional painting processes, and with finer detail as well.

The direct printer functions much like a traditional model, using an inkjet head with nozzles that spray three basic colours (cyan, magenta and yellow) and black. Utilising a seven-square-metre bench, the inkjet head prints a design line by line, from top to bottom. After the process is completed, the aircraft component is sealed with a clear coat.

According to technology manager Matthias Otto, the advantages of direct inkjet-printed liveries are numerous. “I can create colour gradients or photo-realistic motifs that could never be achieved with paint,” he explained, and added that this new method also is capable of printing components of any size or shape. In the past, heavier printed film was used to produce complex designs, however such film is susceptible to the effects of heat, cold and high pressure, and ultimately could tear or peel.

The business case for direct printing is convincing. Compared with painting, where the design has to be built up by layer-by-layer, there are far fewer working and drying steps – greatly reducing the lead time. There also is no overspray or solvent vapour when ink is used, providing better working conditions for Airbus employees, as well as a healthier environment.

At present, the inkjet method still is at the experimental stage. Technical Readiness Level 6 (TRL 6) was reached at the end of June, and the ink and associated processes will be qualified early in 2015. Nonetheless, the project already has become part of the A320 Final Assembly Line (FAL) benchmark initiative, with the intention to further stabilise scheduled lead times for the best-selling Airbus single-aisle jetliner family.

 

Thermoplastics Eyed As Alternative For Metals

By: Thierry Dubois, published in Aviation Week & Space Technology, Sep 1, 2014

Thermoplastic composites are gradually gaining ground over thermosets and metal. Although they offer numerous benefits, the trend has been relatively slow, as the aerospace industry’s investment in thermoset production tooling is recent. But thanks to aerospace’s growing need for higher volumes, the move may now accelerate, piggybacking on the automotive sector’s shift to thermoplastics.

The difference between thermoplastics and thermosets lies in the resin (the matrix) rather than the fibers (the reinforcement). When heated, a thermoplastic resin softens and melts; when cooled down, it can  resolidify without losing any property. The solidification process involves no chemical curing. Advantages of thermoplastics include notably faster manufacturing and better performance.

Some 15-20 years ago, thermoplastics were tried and rejected, including using them in the wing of Boeing’s X-32 demonstrator for the Joint Strike Fighter program. At the time, however, suitable processing technologies such as fiber placement and thermoforming were still unavailable. Moreover, the expected demand for thousands of military aircraft dwindled down to hundreds. Thus, the advantage thermoplastics have in faster manufacturing for higher volumes was no longer of interest.

The latest advancements show that thermoplastics can be used in more, increasingly large primary structure components. Fokker manufactures the horizontal tail of the in-development AgustaWestland AW169 medium twin helicopter. This yields a 15% weight savings over previous composite technology, Fokker claims, thanks to the stiffness of the material. The Dassault Falcon 5X, scheduled to perform its first flight next year, and the in-service Gulfstream G650 business jets have their rudder and elevators made of thermoplastics.

At the laboratory stage is a full horizontal tailplane, including the stabilizer and elevators. “We have manufactured a demonstrator for an aircraft the size of a bizjet,” says Richard Cobben, Fokker Aerostructures’ technology vice president. A 10% weight reduction can be expected compared to thermoset material, he asserts.

Airbus appears relatively conservative on the A350 XWB, which uses thermoplastic clips and brackets. The A380 has thermoplastic J-nose leading edges, adds Christian Weimer, a composite-material expert with Airbus Group Innovations.

EASA has certified Expliseat’s new economy seat that incorporates a thermoplastic resin developed by TenCate.

On the Boeing 787, Montreal-based Marquez supplies thermoplastic air ducts for personal service units. Designed with glass fiber, the part is said to be much lighter and is much quicker to produce than comparable ones—5 min. versus 6 hr. Boeing did not answer Aviation Week requests for more details on thermoplastics on the 787.

Aerostructure specialist Daher-Socata in July announced it had completed the construction of a lighter, cheaper carbon-fiber wingbox demonstrator dubbed Ecowingbox. Both thermoset and thermoplastic resins were tried, even for the main spar. Eventually, the main spar was made with a thermoset resin. Thermoplastics can be found elsewhere in the wingbox, such as the stringers.

In cabin interiors, thermoplastics have been increasingly used for the thinner part design they enable, their straightforward manufacturing and their excellent behavior in flame, smoke and toxicity tests.

They are now beginning to be chosen for more critical features. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in April certified Expliseat’s titanium seat, which passed 16g crash tests yet is twice as light as the nearest competition, according to its designers. It features a composite-titanium structure, for which Netherlands-based TenCate supplied a thermoplastic resin. The seat weighs 8.8 lb. per passenger—it is offered as integrated three-seat assemblies—and divides the part count by 10.

Fokker’s Cobben sees two main benefits in thermoplastics. First, the very high toughness of their matrices, which allow the laminates to be thinner and thus create lighter products. Second, the stamp-forming and welding techniques that can be used with thermoplastics are lower-cost processes.

Tim Greene, Greene Tweed’s product manager, composites, provides more details on the production side. In aerospace thermoplastics, Greene Tweed specializes in manufacturing complex geometric parts, notably by compression molding.

Thermosets have a defined heat-up rate, curing time and cool-down rate. Therefore, the material dictates how long it takes to manufacture a part. “There is very little you can do to cut a lengthy cure cycle, which can be many hours,” Greene says.

Thermoplastics have no such defined cycle, however; so the driver is the equipment—tooling, press, etc. Greene Tweed emphasizes that many thermoplastic processing techniques take place out of an autoclave—an expensive, pressurized oven that often causes production bottlenecks. This creates a potential for faster processing.

Moreover, once a production process has been set up, it can be considered as very reliable, without any deviation, Airbus’s Weimer says. This may be different from thermoset pre-impregnated fiber manufacturing.

Thermoplastics also allow for automated welding. However, while welding (which can involve ultrasound, resistance, induction, vibration, etc.) is widely used in automotive manufacturing, it is not in widespread use in aerospace. Only a few production applications can be found. Some techniques are not mature in aerospace, partly because of the higher requirements and higher temperatures, Greene says.

The butt-joining technique that involves only the resin of the parts was discovered 10 years ago, Fokker’s Cobben remembers. It has been tested and validated on fuselage panels, under the Tapas joint research project with Airbus, TenCate and other partners.

Thermoplastics inherently have better toughness and are more repairable. This opens the door to using them in impact-prone areas. New, toughened thermosets already include thermoplastic particles to improve their impact resistance, Greene says.

“Thermoplastics are more repairable, but we are still looking for the Holy Grail—remelting the resin in the damaged area on the ramp,” Cobben explains. It is do-able in principle but not so easy in practice. The resin softens, so a technician would need some tooling to support the part.

The idea of using thermoplastic composites for those components that are exposed to collisions has limits, however. One could think of using them on a single-aisle fuselage, as such aircraft can be found on a busy apron several times a day. But a difficulty is inherent in the size of the fuselage. The smaller the diameter, the thinner the fuselage and therefore the greater sensitivity to impact, Cobben says.

Finally, another benefit is thermoplastics’ recyclability. Reheating the matrix polymer allows it to be remolded into something else. But the recycled part generally should be used only for non-structural application, as reforming moves the fibers around.

All these benefits are worth investing in if production volumes are high enough. “Thermoplastic resins are more expensive, but prices could decrease sharply if demand picks up, including demand from the automotive sector,” notes Jean-François Maire, director of the materials and structures department at France’s Onera aerospace research center. This is why Fokker’s Cobben sees Japan’s push for thermoplastics in automotive manufacturing as “good for us because it increases volumes.”

But thermoplastics need to make their case versus thermosets. “There is a reluctance to change, especially if OEMs and suppliers have invested in their current development and manufacturing processes using thermosets,” says Kim Choate, Sabic’s director of marketing for mass transportation and innovative plastics. Sabic is a Saudi Arabian petrochemical group.

Two projects that emerged recently in the car industry may have implications for aircraft. Sabic and Switzerland’s Kringlan Composites have developed the world’s first thermoplastic composite wheel for cars. Sabic and Kringlan are looking at applications in other industries in which weight reduction is a key driver, such as aerospace.

In France, Onera and mechanical engineering center Cetim have manufactured the first fully composite automotive wishbone suspension. The part combines light weight, high mechanical performance and swift production, according to its promoters. It is made of a thermoplastic matrix reinforced with carbon fibers.

The weight is cut to 4.4 lb. from 7 lb. However, Maire could not provide a price estimate. As it is a prototype, only the cost of the material may be representative—$9.50. At least the cost of the conventional wishbone suspension, made of metal, is known—$57. Producing one item takes just 8 min. Onera engineers hope to reuse these technologies in aerospace.

In Enschede, Netherlands, the Thermoplastic composites research center (TPRC) opened its laboratory in 2012 and has attracted Boeing, Fokker, TenCate, Daher-Socata and the university of Twente. The TPRC’s activities have taken place in aerospace so far, but automotive has just been added.

Thus the future of thermoplastics in aircraft looks tightly linked to their use in cars. And the ongoing aircraft production ramp-up is spurring interest.

But some challenges remain. For example, today’s thermoplastics are not compatible with thickness variations, Airbus’s Weimer says. According to Sabic’s Choate, they may not be the best alternative in certain instances, such as supersonic applications that require extreme heat tolerances, or when very strong chemical resistance or an extremely high strength-to-weight ratio is required. Knowledge still has to be gained in durability and behavior against fatigue, Maire adds.

Maybe the main problem is a chicken-and-egg issue. The lack of infrastructure and understanding results in a perceived risk, Greene believes. “This slows down thermoplastic adoption,” he says. So will thermoplastics eventually take over thermosets? Experts agree that thermosets will not be replaced for specific environments or when only a small number of parts needs to be manufactured. Greene sees the main potential for his company being the replacement of complex-shape metallic parts for secondary and semi-structural applications—covers, enclosures, fairings, etc. “We are looking at the remaining 50% or so of metal in an aircraft; the idea is not to replace thermosets but to replace the remaining metal,” he says. 

Boeing testing robots to improve 777 productivity

By: STEPHEN TRIMBLE, published in Flightglobal.com, Aug 29, 2014

As early as next year, Boeing could activate a robotic system to drill and fasten tens of thousands of rivets on the 777, as the company makes its boldest move yet in automating assembly of major aircraft structures.

Automation has crept slowly into aerospace manufacturing. Flex-track machines are now used to drill holes in many structures, but the process of manually riveting and bucking the fasteners into the holes has remained almost unchanged for decades.

“In many ways we still build fuselages like we did for the 707,” Boeing vice-president and general manager for the 777 programme Elizabeth Lund says. “And so we’re sort of excited about taking this next step and improving how we’re doing this.”

Boeing’s 14 July announcement means ­automation technology has progressed enough to handle what Lund calls a “dark, magic thing”.

Riveting and bucking is currently a two-person job. The riveter drills the fastener into one side of a structure.

On the other side, a worker holds a bucking bar – a steel anvil – that provides the back-pressure necessary to flatten and deform the fastener on the inside of the structure. The bucking function requires just the right touch – pressing too much or too little fails to install the fastener properly.

Boeing trains the two-person crews for several weeks to become proficient. The pair must learn when to signal each other to know when to start and stop applying pressure.

Despite training and experience, the repetitive, physically demanding work still accounts for the largest share of workplace injuries in the company’s assembly process.

FAUB systems work in Pairs, replicating human riveting and bucking functions

Boeing

Starting more than a year ago, Boeing began secretly testing a robotic alternative to manual riveting and bucking. The machines were installed in a leased building in Anacortes – a Puget Sound community north of Boeing’s widebody final assembly centre in Everett. Laboratory testing had shown Boeing that it was possible for robots to sense the appropriate level of pressure to apply, simulating what a human does by feel.

The testing in Anacortes is evaluating new machines made by Kuka Robotics USA. The orange-coloured robots work in pairs, replicating human riveting and bucking functions. The robotic system – which Boeing calls the fuselage assembly upright build (FAUB) – remains in evaluation, but could be moved into the 777 production system early next year.

Fatigue tests on structural coupons so far indicate that the FAUB is superior to manual labour. “This does produce a better capability from a structural standpoint than manual riveting does,” Lund says. “We know it certainly is a much narrower band [of quality deviation]. If you look at manual riveting you see a much wider deviation.”

Boeing plans to use the FAUB initially to build the forward sections – numbered 41/43 – and the 46/48 aft sections of the 737 fuselage. The 44/45 sections in the mid-fuselage will be assembled manually, however, Lund says.

“We are working now on how we build [the mid-fuselage], but that’s still on the drawing board,” Lund says. “It just doesn’t have the complexity and the need for robots like this. We might be able to use some flex-track ­technology or other kinds of robotics. Something quite this advanced isn’t called for in the mids because the ­access is easier.”

Boeing currently assembles 777s in the 40-25 bay of the Everett complex, and builds up structures in the 40-35 and 40-36 bays.

As the FAUB is ­installed, structural assembly will move to new section of the building now under construction, called the 40-27 bay.

“We don’t have a firm cutover commitment,” Lund says. “If the testing goes well in Anacortes and we start to bring it down here we could be in production sometime next year.”

The pending introduction of the FAUB comes after a long, tense standoff between Boeing and its largest union – the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). In January, the union’s 30,000 members voted narrowly in favour of giving up pensions and other benefits in exchange for keeping 777 production in Everett.

Lund says the FAUB will improve productivity on the 777 line, but emphasises there are no near-term workforce reductions planned.

“Eventually, will [we] be able to build a fuselage with fewer people than it takes today? Yes,” Lund says. “Now, that said… there is a lot of work to do on the Everett site. I don’t want that translated into a reduction of the labour force.”

The FAUB joins a growing list of robotic manufacturing systems entering Boeing’s production system. Last year, Boeing replaced human paint sprayers with an automated system. The company is also expanding the use of flex track drilling machines.

Boeing is relying on automation to cope with surging production levels across nearly all its commercial product lines. The 777 line has increased in rate to 8.3 per month from seven per month. Boeing has raised the 737 ­production rate from 31 per month to 42 over the past three years. Output on the 787programme’s three assembly lines has grown five-fold in less than three years.

Robotic systems help by increasing productivity and flexibility, Lund says. Boeing can install two sets of robotic riveting and bucking pairs, positioning one on the main deck and one below the deck. The Kuka robots can also be installed without permanently attaching them to the floor of the factory, Lund adds.

“There will be nothing that’s mounted to the ground in this entire system except utilities – power, air, and so on,” Lund says. “Everything is moveable and flexible.

“So as we learn and adjust to this system it gives us the flexibility to reconfigure and continue improvements.”

Aircraft set to become more human as engineers develop smart skins which can detect injury

By Rob Vogelaar, aviationnews.eu.

Work is underway at BAE Systems to give aircraft human-like ‘skin’, enabling the detection of injury or damage and the ability to ‘feel’ the world around them.

Engineers at BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre are investigating a ‘smart skin’ concept which could be embedded with tens of thousands of micro-sensors. When applied to an aircraft, this will enable it to sense wind speed, temperature, physical strain and movement, far more accurately than current sensor technology allows.

The revolutionary ‘smart skin’ concept will enable aircraft to continually monitor their health, reporting back on potential problems before they become significant. This would reduce the need for regular check-ups on the ground and parts could be replaced in a timely manner, increasing the efficiency of aircraft maintenance, the availability of the plane and improving safety.

These tiny sensors or ‘motes’ can be as small as grains of rice and even as small as dust particles at less than 1mm squared. Collectively, the sensors would have their own power source and when paired with the appropriate software, be able to communicate in much the same way that human skin sends signals to the brain. The sensors are so small that we are exploring the possibility of retrofitting them to existing aircraft and even spraying them on like paint.

Leading the research and development is Senior Research Scientist Lydia Hyde whose ‘eureka’ moment came when she was doing her washing and observed that her tumble dryer uses a sensor to prevent it from overheating.

Lydia said: “Observing how a simple sensor can be used to stop a domestic appliance overheating, got me thinking about how this could be applied to my work and how we could replace bulky, expensive sensors with cheap, miniature, multi-functional ones. This in turn led to the idea that aircraft, or indeed cars and ships, could be covered by thousands of these motes creating a ‘smart skin’ that can sense the world around them and monitor their condition by detecting stress, heat or damage. The idea is to make platforms ‘feel’ using a skin of sensors in the same way humans or animals do.

“By combining the outputs of thousands of sensors with big data analysis, the technology has the potential to be a game-changer for the UK industry. In the future we could see more robust defence platforms that are capable of more complex missions whilst reducing the need for routine maintenance checks. There are also wider civilian applications for the concept which we are exploring.”

This research is part of a range of new systems we are investigating under a major programme exploring next-generation technology for air platforms.