With trends showing increased use of composites produced through automated manufacturing, the third symposium on Automated Composites Manufacturing is being held in Montreal during April 20-21, 2017. The event will bring together academia and industry on advanced composites manufacturing using automated technologies and see presentation on NCC's research.

 

The symposium will provide a forum for discussion on the latest developments in automated composites and have presentation on topics such as automated manufacturing of thermoset and thermoplastic composite structures, automated dry fibre placement, automated manufacturing of composite structures with complex shape, fibre steering and variable stiffness composite structures, advances in materials and equipment suited for automation, process development and optimisation, mechanical performance of fibre placed composite structures, quality assurance, and virtual manufacturing environments

 

Mattia Di Francesco and Laura Veldenz, both engineering doctorate research engineers at NCC's automated deposition team, will present their research. Francesco will present his work on the "feature-based design for manufacturing guidelines for dry fibre AFP" and Veldenz will discuss her research on "assessment of steering capability of automated dry fibre placement through a quantitative methodology". 

 

Both presentations are part of the work supported by the National Composites Centre through the Core Research and Technology Programme and by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council through the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Composites Manufacture.   

 

The symposium is also expected to witness lectures by keynote speakers like Dr. Z Gürdal from McNAIR Center for Aerospace Innovation and Research Ronald, US, Arnt Offringa from Fokker Technologies, the Netherlands, and Dr. Suresh G Advani, Center for Composite Materials, University of Delaware, US.

 

The first international symposium on Automated Composites Manufacturing was held in Montreal in April 2013. The event was a great success for the composite manufacturing community with over 36 oral presentations and participants from 11 countries. The second in the series was held in Montreal in April 2015 which saw 47 presentations and 150 participants from 13 countries. (SV)