LONDON - GKN Aerospace has been selected to lead a 27-month, GBP30 million future wing research program, backed by the U.K.'s Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI). The Validation and Integration of Manufacturing Enablers for Future Wing Structures (VIEWS) program is intended to bring promising wing design, manufacturing, and assembly technologies to near market readiness, while selecting some novel technologies for further development.

The VIEWS effort will work on technologies that emerged from the recently-completed Structures Technology Maturity (STeM) research program. Also led by GKN Aerospace, the STeM program identified processes that could reduce the cost of manufacture and assembly of a typical composite box structure by 20 percent.

Simon Weeks, ATI Chief Technology Officer, said, "The STeM collaborative R&T program, managed by GKN Aerospace, demonstrated the very best in terms of innovation and promise for the future."

The work of the VIEWS program will span manufacturing and assembly processes including identifying and defining future manufacturing requirements to produce novel wing architectures; assessing tools that will improve product and process design and enhance the flow of production; progressing a variety of emerging composite and metallic manufacturing and assembly technologies and processes; and studying innovative inspection and repair tools. In the final stages, demonstrators will be tested to validate the maturity of key technologies.

The VIEWS team includes 13 partners. These include four industrial partners: GKN Aerospace, Bombardier Aerospace, Spirit AeroSystems, and GE Aviation. Other partners include five of the U.K.'s manufacturing catapult centers: the National Composites Centre, the Manufacturing Technology Centre, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (at the University of Sheffield), the Warwick Manufacturing Group ( at the University of Warwick), and the Advanced Forming Research Centre (at the University of Strathclyde). In addition, the VIEWS group includes the universities of Bath, Bristol, Nottingham, and Sheffield Hallam.

Rich Oldfield, GKN Aerospace Technical Director, said, "Through the Institute, the U.K. aerospace sector is able to work together effectively to develop promising technologies and processes that will help us maintain our position as the strongest national aerospace industry outside the USA. STeM saw us make valuable progress and VIEWS will work from that base, taking us nearer to market readiness with a new generation of automated processes and technologies that will extend what we in the U.K. are able to manufacture, at the same time as increasing the quality, consistency. and speed of production."

Source: GKN Aerospace