Fourth Composites@Manchester Research Workshop

Welcome to Materials 11 July 2019

The Composites@Manchester initiative has hosted four annual workshops, aiming to bring together early career researchers to share their research in the field of composite materials, as part of a wider community. The fourth Composites@Manchester Research Workshop took place on Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 June 2019 in the iconic Sackville Street Building of The University of Manchester.

Attendance to conferences, particularly in the field of composites, can be costly and daunting for early career researchers, so often academics will present the work of their students. The primary aim of the Composites@Manchester Research Workshop is to be accessible mainly to UK-based early career researchers to present their work and build their professional networks in this field. Engaging like-minded individuals at an early stage of their career, whether in academia or industry, is the key to building fruitful collaborations and solving the materials challenges we face in a range of industries.

Professor Constantinos Soutis, director of the Aerospace Research Institute and Northwest Composites Centre at The University of Manchester, opened the workshop on the first day. Over the two days more than 80 students, researchers and academics participated in the event. Around two-thirds of participants were from The University of Manchester, representing various schools including Materials, Mathematics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE), Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE), and Chemical Engineering. The remaining participants came from academia and industry, from across the UK, Ireland, Poland and Germany.

Composites@Manchester workshop demographic statistics — Demographic of delegates who attended the fourth Composites@Manchester Workshop on 25 and 26 June 2019.

The organisers were honoured to host keynote speakers from industry and academia. Dr Yan Liu of Cygnet Texkimp spoke about the advanced manufacture of composite materials and their potential role in the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0); Dr Matthieu Gresil of The University of Manchester spoke about multi-scale modelling of graphene reinforced polymer composites, to understand the role and influence of nanoparticles on the electrical and thermal properties of the material; and Dr Yu Shi of the University of Chester shared a number of case studies undertaken by his research group to address the challenges associated with damage modelling and prediction in multifunctional composite materials.

Participants shared their research through a combination of oral presentations and poster presentations. A quick-fire round of presentations gave poster presenters the opportunity to pitch their research to the audience prior to the poster session, by delivering a single presentation slide in two minutes. Preetum Mistry, a PhD researcher from the University of Nottingham, won the poster presentation competition for his poster entitled: ‘Carbon fibre thermoplastic composites for light-weighting rail structures’. The runners up were Oguzcan Inal and Yunong Yuan, a PhD and an MPhil researcher from The University of Manchester.

Poster competition winners — Winner and runners up in the poster competition: Yunong Yuan, Oguzcan Inal, Preetum Mistry (winner, from the University of Nottingham).

The support from the Aerospace Research Institute and the School of Materials is sincerely appreciated. The workshop was sponsored financially by the Aerospace Research Institute – a generous contribution that is gratefully acknowledged. The enthusiasm and interest shown by all participants, chairs and co-chairs of all of our sessions truly anchors the success of the event and we look forward to the future workshops.