Smart infrastructure is the next step in the evolution of our transport systems, and as it emerges we will see the convergence of technologies including sensors, infrastructure and data to enable more intelligent use and maintenance.

Smart, lightweight, off site manufactured composite structures of the near future, including bridges and platforms, will contain sensors and be able to provide data on their condition and use.

On 3rd June, NCC Collaborative Research Manager, Dan Kells attended a meeting at the Royal Society of Chemistry to scope out the next Innovate call on Graphene. The meeting was facilitated by Steve Morris at The KTN and took the form of a workshop to discuss the way of using graphene, the properties and the key application areas where graphene could be exploited. Attendance was around 60 and included people with widely differing backgrounds; from academics to industrialists to mining experts.

Engineering Design students from the University of Bristol have teamed up with Icon Films to design and construct the UK’s first lead balloon for BBC One’s The One Show with a little lift from us here at the National Composites Centre (NCC).

Following a successful challenge in 2014 building a functional chocolate teapot, Icon Films and Marty Jopson enlisted the expertise of the Engineering Design students to dispel the idiom and prove it is possible to fly a lead balloon.

The NCC will be actively supporting the brokerage event at Nantes, as a High Value Manufacturing Catapult centre.

We would like to invite our Members and non-Member customers to attend the event (or pass on any project interest to the NCC in the event you are unable to attend). The main purpose of the event is to get potential EU partners together, particularly French and British industrial, academic and RTO counterparts.

Objectives: