The project will develop novel UK designed and manufactured compact Rb-oscillators to serve as holdover clocks in GNSS-independent applications requiring precision timing. The state-of-the-art compact atomic clocks arising from this project shall take advantage of recent advances in Quantum Technologies to find widespread application in new and revamped UK critical national infrastructure applications requiring precision timing. At present, many of these applications rely on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) for a stable clock signal, but these signals are easily disrupted and prolonged GNSS unavailability can lead to vast disruption to critical UK services and economy (the estimated cost of a five-day outage is £5.2Bn). New options for a UK satellite navigation and timing capability programme are presently being explored to support the nation's critical infrastructure, and these are anticipated to require a vast number of holdover clocks for added resilience. For many existing and emerging applications, including 5G, the current atomic clocks on the market, which are all non-UK based and under export control, are either too bulky and expensive, or the holdover performance is not good enough, leading to solutions involving GNSS signals. Many of these clocks are also based on technologies that are decades old. The clocks produced in this project will bring a new generation of atomic clocks using new enhanced atom-interrogation methods developed at HCD Research and the National Physical Laboratory to provide extended holdover capabilities. These clocks will also address timing challenges in many civil and military applications, providing more assurance in supply to the UK, better security through better use of technology, and safeguarding and exploiting UK-developed intellectual property to provide economic gains for the UK.

Designing products collaboratively and exploiting new technologies in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) requires novel approaches to the ways engineering teams must work. In the COLIBRI project we will explore and develop new tools that exploit advances in AI/ML to improve and speed up the collaborative design environment for the UK's aerospace design community. This will include the use of advanced design process automation tools, voxel based geometry to augment the capabilities of conventional CAD tools and generative adversarial network and convolution neural methods to provide an AI/ML layer to these tools.

SECT-AIR’s aims are to develop strategies for the UK high integrity software industry to significantly lower development costs and to scope a UK aerospace software centre-of excellence to maintain these strategies in the future. SECT-AIR plans to define processes and technologies that will make a step change reduction to software development costs; gain adoption of these through certification authorities and wider industry engagement and to ensure a better flow of technology between academia and industry in these areas in the future.

Geometry is at the heart of all aerodynamic and mechanical design processes and tools. The creation, manipulation and discretisation of geometry has become the bottle neck in design-simulation iteration time and therefore is a limiting factor in our ability to reduce time to market. Increasing competitive, environmental and commercial pressures are demanding ever higher performing products which in turn need more design iterations and simulation which means that the importance of geometry and its integration with the design process and simulation is increasing. GEMinIDS will deliver geometry handling and meshing technology that builds upon the GHandI (Geometry Handling and Integration) project whilst also extending its scope to Integrated Design Systems. GEMinIDS brings together the technology and consortium established in GHandI, with leading SMEs and academics in the field, to produce a project with a scale, breadth and level of synergy that will enable a step change in UK competitiveness in this important enabling technology.

One of the most fundamental properties affecting the aerodynamic performance of a body is its shape. With progressively increasing demands for performance, the need to explore and optimise the performance of novel airframe shapes rapidly and with robust, efficient processes is becoming increasingly important. This poses significant challenges for the ways in which the associated geometry is generated and manipulated (in support of design) both on its wetted surfaces and in the adjacent air flow (i.e. the computational mesh). Greater attention is being focused on these challenges globally and it is vital that the UK keeps ahead of the competition. The proposed research programme will, for the first time, bring together key strands of the UK aerodynamics community who are currently active in this area, facilitate knowledge sharing and cross-fertilisation via complementary, research activities, and establish innovative capabilities and shared understanding.

The public description for this project has been requested but has not yet been received.

Awaiting Public Summary

Awaiting Public Summary