Professor Andrew Long is the Centre's Director. He has worked for over 20 years on manufacturing and design of composite components and structures, and has an international reputation for his own work on automated manufacturing technologies and process modelling. He has led a number of collaborative EPSRC, TSB and industry funded projects on composites manufaccturing, working with major industry partners including Airbus, BAE Systems, Bentley, Bombardier, Ford, GE, Network Rail, QinetiQ and Rolls-Royce, and collaborating with academic partners at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Cranfield, Manchester, Newcastle and Ulster.
Professor Long is Principal Investigator (PI) for the EPSRC Platform Grant on Textile Composites (EP/F02911X) and led the Lightweight Structures theme within the Nottingham IMRC (EP/E001904/1). He is Director of the Institute of Aerospace Technology, a research and knowledge transfer institute supported by £3.6million ERDF funding, and has secured EPSRC investment of £1.4million to provide equipment to underpin the aerospace research base (EP/H049746). As chairman of SAMPE UK & Ireland Chapter he has organised a number of conferences and CPD events on composites manufacture, and is Scientific Committee member for several international conference series. Professor Long has supervised over 20 successful PhD students, and has published three textbooks and around 300 papers. He has received the IoM3 Composites Award for best published work twice and in 2006 was awarded the Rosenhain Medal for his distinguished contribution to materials science.
Currently he is Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at The University of Nottingham.
Dr Schubel is the National Centre Manager. He has worked for over 13 years on design and processing of composite components and structures, focusing in particular on automated manufacturing and low cost materials for the automotive, aerospace and wind energy sectors. Dr Schubel’s research has been supported by a variety of agencies, including the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), EU-ERDF, the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) on design and manufacturing with polymer composites (AIRPOWER, SuSWind, EcoTrans), gaining special recognition at the Engineering Technology and Innovation Awards 2010 and JEC Innovation Awards 2011.
Over the last 12 years an estimated £ 3M has been obtained in research grants and external contracts as PI or as co-investigator. This work has involved collaboration with major industry partners including Gamesa, Vestas, Moog, GE, BAE Systems, Hexcel, MAG, Ford, and Aston Martin. He has broad experience in composite materials processing with detailed experience of cost effective manufacturing for medium to large structures. His main interests are materials development for automated applications, particularly the structural and cost advantages for high value components.
Dr Schubel has over 70 publications. He has given invited seminars at a number of centres both nationally and internationally and is on the review board for FP7 and Cleansky as well as several journals including Renewable Energy, Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology.
Professor Nick Warrior is the Centre's Strategic Development Board Chair and Head of the Polymer Composites Group and Materials, Mechanics and Structures Division in the Faculty of Engineering at Nottingham University. He is recognised internationally for his research on the manufacturing and design of directed fibre and high performance polymer composites for automotive applications, which is currently being developed under the TSB Composites Grand Challenge.
Professor Warrior is PI for several TSB and industrial projects (portfolio value of £2.2 million) and Co-Investigator (CI) on the Platform Grant on Textile Composites (EP/F02911X). In 2009 he received the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal Award for successful industrial exploitation of composite materials.
Dr Richard Brooks is a Principal Investigator at the Centre. He is well known internationally for his work on rapid manufacturing of thermoplastic composites for automotive and other industries. He is PI on the TSB/EPSRC funded sustainable composites manufacturing project SHIELD (TS/H000623/1) and leads the academic work on the TSB project LiMBS (TP8/MAT/6/1/1576E), developing novel composite structures for defence applications. He is also CI on the Nottingham Platform Grant (EP/F02911X) and has led projects to the value of £800k at the Nottingham Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre (EP/E001904), investigating the manufacturing of novel composite sandwich structures. He has worked closely with industry including secondments to Ford Motor Company and The Department for Transport.
Professor Ivana Partridge is Postgraduate Development Committee Chair for the Centre. She recently moved from the position of leading the composites activities at Cranfield University to the ACCIS group at the University of Bristol. From there she directs the new multi-partner EPSRC Industrial Doctorate Centre in Composites Manufacture, with particularly close links to the National Composites Centre. Her long-term research interests include thermoset resin and composite toughening, through-thickness reinforcement of composites, composite process control and polymer-metal-fibre hybridization. Her past research has been funded mainly by EPSRC grants, but also by EU and direct industry programmes.
Professor Partridge is Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IoM3) and the current Vice-Chair of the Executive Board of the British Composites Society (Division of IoM3). She is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and the Research Awards review group of the Royal Society.
Mr Andrew Mills is a Principal Investigator for the Centre. He leads the development of technologies for the cost effective manufacturing of lightweight composite structures in close partnership with industry. He has 25 years experience investigating and developing advanced composite materials and process technology for aerospace and niche automotive applications, initially with BAE Systems, then PERA and Courtaulds. He lead the Airbus UK / Cranfield project 'AMCAPS investigating novel materials and process technology for large composite wing manufacture, some techniques from which have now been qualified for the Airbus A380.
Mr Mills is a committee member of SAMPE UK & Ireland Chapter. Recent grants include EPSRC/BAES funded FLAVIIR (GR/S71552/01; Flapless Unmanned Aircraft – Composites Manufacturing), which developed low cost manufacturing technology for a demonstrator wing-box and manufactured an all carbon fibre composite airframe for a flight demonstrator aircraft, DEMON1 - ETI/EPSRC/Industry funded NOVA (Offshore novel wind turbine composite structures) and EU funded PRECARBI (Preforming for aerospace liquid resin moulding).
Professor Kevin Potter is the Deputy Director of the Centre. He is recognised worldwide for work on composites manufacturing, particularly on reinforcement deformation, dimensional variability and defect generation. He played a key role in winning £25million National Composites Centre funding from BIS, SWRDA and ERDF and £10million Composites Grand Challenge funding from government and industry.
Professor Potter is the only academic recipient of the Royal Aeronautical Society Peter Allard Silver Medal for practical achievements leading to the use of composites in aerospace.
Professor Michael Wisnom is a Principal Investigator for the Centre. He is a leading authority on mechanics and failure of fibre reinforced composites, with key contributions on fundamental failure mechanisms, residual stresses and distortion during manufacturing, understanding of controlling factors and models to predict response.
Professor Wisnom is Editor-in-Chief of Composites Part A, Applied Science and Manufacturing, one of the top journals in the field, past President of the International Committee on Composite Materials, Fellow of the American Society of Composites and recipient of a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.
Dr Prasad Potluri is a Principal Investigator for the Centre. He is a Reader in Textile Composites at the University of Manchester and an internationally leading researcher in the area of technical textiles, with experience in 3D textile preforming and modelling textile structures arising from composites processing. Combining his expertise in applied robotics and textile technology, he has developed a range of novel, bespoke preforming machines for 3D weaving, dry fibre placement, stitching and tufting. He has worked on EPSRC funded projects on 3D weaving and process modelling, and is currently working on two TSB funded projects related to multi-scale modelling and manufacturing of textile composites, and an AFRL (USA Airforce) funded project on 3D weaving.
Dr Stephen Hallett is an Investigator for the Centre and Reader in Composite Structures at the University of Bristol. He has over 12 years of experience in working with composite materials and developed an international reputation for the quality of his work. His research is focussed on numerical modelling of composites, both for prediction of mechanical properties and also the manufacturing processes to capture deformations and defects, which ultimately lead to failure. This has also included work on 3D woven and textile composites. He also has extensive experience of carrying out experimental programmes to characterise material behaviour, necessary for development of high quality, physically based models.
Professor Peter Foote is Head of the Composites Centre at Cranfield University. He recently joined the University as an EPSRC Manufacturing Fellow after spending 25 years in industry at BAE Systems. During that time he spearheaded pioneering work on structural health monitoring and management concepts combining high value composite structures with a range of in-situ sensor technologies including embedded optical fibres. His research interests are in verification and validation of health monitoring sensors and their use in enhancing the capabilities of composite structures from design, through manufacture and through life. He is also active in development of ideas for Integrated Vehicle Health Management. Peter Foote chairs the SAE International standards committee on structural health monitoring (G-11 SHM), is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a former Royal Society Industrial Fellow.
Professor Constantinos Soutis is an Investigator for the Centre. He is Chair in Aerospace Engineering, Director of the Aerospace Research Institute and Research Director of the Northwest Composites Centre at the University of Manchester. He has over 25 years of experience in working with composite structures and has made significant research contributions in modelling the compressive response of composite plates with open or filled holes under uniaxial, bi-axial static and fatigue loading; impact and post-impact compressive strength and crush energy absorption; modelling of damage in orthotropic laminates under multi-axial in-plane loading; structural health monitoring using low frequency Lamb waves and repair techniques. Some of the fracture models he developed have been implemented in commercial computer design packages, used successfully by industry and academia. His industrial research and engineering experience includes work with the Structural Materials Centre of the Defence Evaluation & Research Agency (Visiting Research Fellow, 1995-2001), QinetiQ (Trusted Expert, 2001-2003), Cambridge Consultants, Cytec Materials Engineering and ABB Research in Switzerland. He is the author or co-author of over 350 archived articles, which include more than 170 ISI listed journal papers and some 20 PhD students have qualified under his supervision and guidance. Professor Soutis is an Associate Editor of the RAeS Aeronautical Journal and the International Journal of Structural Health Monitoring.