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The world's longest high capacity terrestrial commercial communications system, now deployed worldwide, was developed from Aston University's pioneering research on the concept of dispersion managed solitons. The concepts and expertise from this research were used to develop and implement the associated system design for high capacity (1Tb/s) WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) transmission over 1000s of kilometres. Commercial development was led by Prof Doran and the core team from Aston who left the University to found Marconi-Solstis, a part of Marconi plc. Prof Doran and other key members of this team have since returned to Aston The system, now owned by Ericsson, (but still called Marconi MHL3000) has current annual sales of order $100M, and employs hundreds of people worldwide.
The University was the first adopter of the Direct Metal Laser Sintering/Melting (DMLS/M) technology in the UK resulting in significant research and knowledge transfer activities in the UK and globally. The University has and continues to be a catalyst in technology introduction for 5 out of the 10 UK companies that use this technology. This accounts for £2.5M of capital investment within the UK and is currently the largest concentration of this technology worldwide. Research has involved process optimisation, analytical simulation, materials development (including MMCs) with UK and international partners. Application research engagement has been in Automotive (including F1), Aerospace, Medical and Jewellery sectors.
Packaging is vital for sales and for product protection for all process industries, with the most widely used world-wide being board and film. For example, the grocery sector alone represents about 70% of the UK packaging market, with 10 million tonnes of packaging used each year.
Packaging materials are variable, which poses significant challenges in packaging machine design. A further challenge has arisen due to environmental legislation that requires the use of thinner, lighter weight materials. There is a need to meet these challenges since the size of the world market for packaging machinery is around €20bn, of which 2% is associated with the UK. Research at Bath has helped address these challenges in a number of inter-related areas:
Research has been undertaken in collaboration with industrial companies consisting mainly of SMEs, end users and research associations. Impact has been gained by embedding the results within the collaborating companies and by on-going use of the results by research associations.
This research has led to the creation of new business sectors in laser development for medical and healthcare applications, which has enabled the creation of a world-wide market worth US$96 million in 2011, and a local spin-out, Fianium Ltd, which now has more than 50 employees and an annual turnover of around £10 million. Exploiting a radically new optical component invented at the University of Southampton, the microstructured optical fibre (MOF), this research has led to economic benefit through the creation of hundreds of jobs worldwide, and enabled the development of new diagnostic and medical technologies.
Viewing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as very rigid polymer molecules led to research on turning them into useful materials. Strategic investments to develop different aspects of this research have been made by two separate companies. A process for the synthesis of CNTs was transferred to Thomas Swan Ltd who have made significant investment, and are now Europe's leading supplier of high-quality CNTs. In 2003 a process was invented to spin CNT fibres directly from a synthesis reactor. The process is intrinsically cheaper than the conventional process for carbon fibre and it produces a tougher and more versatile product. The University of Cambridge (UCAM) spin-out company Q-Flo Ltd (created in 2004 to achieve focus on transfer of this technology) and Plasan (multinational manufacturer of vehicle defensive armour) formed a joint venture in 2010 which has enabled the first-stage scale-up of manufacture.
Components built using 3D composite manufacturing methods developed by Cranfield are now flying on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. This is the first use of structural composites in commercial aircraft landing gear. The prototypes were assembled and reinforced using robot automated technology developed at Cranfield.
Cranfield's work has extended the use of composite materials into critical landing-gear systems, allowing Messier-Bugatti-Dowty to contribute to the use of 50% composite materials for the airframe of the new 787, delivering weight reduction and better fuel economy.
Underpinned by research at the University of Nottingham, the development of automated discontinuous carbon fibre preforming (DCFP) technology has helped drive more than half a billion pounds in sales of Aston Martin's DBS sports car across 42 countries, boosting the company's brand worldwide. Recognising the potential of this process, Bentley Motors invested £1.3M directly to develop this technology for its next generation of models. The Royal Academy of Engineering acknowledged the body of research as an "outstanding" contribution to the reputation of British engineering through the award of a silver medal to Professor Warrior.
Professor Stephen Russell's fundamental and applied research on the formation, structure and properties of nonwoven fabrics has directly led to the creation and continued success of the Nonwovens Innovation and Research Institute (NIRI) Ltd a University of Leeds spin-out company. Formed in 2005 to exploit Russell's research, NIRI has grown annual sales revenue to ~£1 million supplying products and services that have enabled many medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and global public limited companies (PLCs) to launch improved or new products, growing their market share and positively impacting consumers. Additionally, the research has enabled NIRI to independently establish and co-fund new commercial joint ventures that have resulted in the development of new IP (intellectual property)-protected products for improving global health and security. NIRI has grown its workforce to twenty (mainly University graduates) and has been profitable from the first year of trading.
Ultra-precise Bragg grating writing-technology, invented in the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), has led to impacts in the areas of security, safety, detection of bio-hazards and the underpinning laser technology currently being pursued for clean energy generation for future energy security. This case study highlights two aspects of the technology namely: planar-based for optical microchip sensors in areas such as portable detection of biohazards, which has resulted in the spin-out Stratophase, and fibre-based, inside the US National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest laser system, based in California, built for fusion-energy research, which has ORC fabricated fibre Bragg gratings within its laser amplifier chains. These ultra-high precision laser-written engineered gratings have enabled important advances in biosecurity, management of environmental hazards and clean energy research.
The impact presented in this case study is the commercialisation of 15 products with perfume microcapsules by Procter and Gamble (P&G), made possible using capsule mechanical strength data provided by Prof Zhibing Zhang's research group at Birmingham. Use of microcapsules gives improved freshness performance, and thus commercial advantage, compared with traditional formulations; they have been incorporated in P&G's four major billion-dollar brands — Downy, Febreze, Lenor and Tide. This has significantly improved their competitiveness enabling P&G to retain their leading position in the USA and Western Europe. A novel micromanipulation technique developed at the University of Birmingham has been used extensively to obtain mechanical properties data for the micro-particles, including microcapsules prepared in Birmingham and provided by companies, which is related to their formulation and processing conditions and end- use performance. In addition, the knowledge generated has helped 15 other companies to commercialise new functional products containing micro-particles.