INDUSTRY HISTORY


MATERIAL PIONEERS


How did the UK composites sector get to where it is today and what factors have shaped what we have now? Dr Neil Calder looks at just how far we’ve come.


I


n thinking about the origins of man-made composites it can be difficult to know where to start. It is very easy to get tangled up in descriptions of Assyrian composite bows from


c.1800BC using laminated wood, horn and animal sinews within a resin matrix and what can justifiably be classified ‘ceramic composites’ using straw in bricks from biblical times. A credible starting point for the UK advanced composites


sector, however, is the first fibre reinforced plastic, Gordon Aerolite. This was a flax reinforced phenolic resin composite produced by Aero Research Ltd in 1937 and from which a Spitfire fuselage demonstrator was made. The resulting material was half the specific density of sheet duralumin (now known to most of us as 2000 series aluminium alloys) which was the principal airframe structural material of that time – a time when ‘plastic’ generally meant Bakelite and was regarded as inferior to more traditional engineering materials. Aero Research Ltd was acquired by Ciba-Geigy in the 1960s and the composites division became part of Hexcel in 1996 – still operating 75 years later at the original Duxford site. In high performance composites, the early work on carbon


fibres was investigating alternative manufacturing routes for high performance structures. This work, at the Royal Aeronautical Establishment by William Watt and his colleagues in the 1960s, pioneered the decomposition of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor filaments into continuous fibres of elemental carbon which were virtually free from physical defects. The cost of these early materials was prohibitive for all but the most demanding of applications and the failure in 1971 to develop a


12 | Composites in Manufacturing | Autumn 2010


viable solution for the Rolls-Royce RB211 fan structure drove these naturally into the defence field. Products made from these materials were virtually handmade. A high degree of manual intervention was used in all stages of manufacture from raw material to finished article, and the first era of high performance composites was consequently shaped by this reliance on human input. It is interesting also to look at the vertical integration which


has existed within the composites value chain. The early pioneers had to figure it all out for themselves, with in-house solutions for reinforcement and matrix material, process, tooling, design, production, testing, and quality, writing the rule book as they went along. This is where the British tradition of inventiveness really came into play. As Sir Ernest Rutherford (actually a New Zealander, but working in Cambridge) ably described in his early work splitting the atom: “we don’t have the money, so we have to think.” This is somewhat at odds with the way things have happened in the US where the Department of Defence has spent some decades throwing billions of dollars at its composites industrial capability.


The importance of communication


This characteristic of the UK sector gave rise to a lot of home grown solutions and has done nothing to dispel the image of composites as a ‘black art’. There have been a wide range of standards involved in the sector – one of the key tasks of recent times has been to try to untangle the situation which has given rise to some material suppliers supplying the same material to different business units of the same customer under different specifications. I have frequently described composites


Workers assembling a Spitfire fuselage section, produced from the first fibre reinforced plastic, Gordon Aerolite


Dr Norman de Bruyne,


founder of Aero Research Ltd and pioneer of the first fibre reinforced


plastic, Gordon Aerolite


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44