Laser welding is a high throughput, low distortion, fully automated joining method, already used by aerospace and automotive industries for several decades to fabricate structures from fuselage sections to car bodies. The requirements on the welds in such structures, depending on the application in question, can be very demanding: strength, resistance to fatigue, resistance to corrosion, aesthetics etc. Laser welding takes place at high speed and results in very small welds. This, coupled with the demands placed on the welds, renders even small imperfections unacceptable. Meeting this quality challenge is always difficult. This is becoming more so, as structures needed for safer and more energy-efficient aircraft and mass-electrification of road transport become larger and more intricate. This currently limits the broader uptake of laser welding, which would otherwise be an attractively productive manufacturing technique. This is compounded by the fact that laser welding requires precise setup. Welding can prove intolerant to small gaps between parts, or small positioning errors between the laser beam and those parts. Gaps and errors can result from problems upstream, with inadequate material controls, incorrect part placement, and poor fixturing, as well as distortion-induced part movement during welding. Such problems are further exacerbated in larger structures made out of thin materials. Cost-effective, flexible, and accurate beam manipulation over a large working area is essential, as is a capability for intelligent real-time adjustments in the beam during welding. This requirement is not currently well served by industrial robots, nor alternative manipulators such as scanners or gantries. The e-Tau project will develop, test and validate a novel precision laser welding system, facilitating a step-change in the quality of larger aerospace and automotive welded structures: * By developing cutting-edge high precision parallel kinematic machine (PKM) Tau robot manipulation * That works with advanced laser beam wobbling optics * Integrated with intelligent quality assurance and control sensors * Then demonstrating the application of that system to the fabrication of large wing skin structures for the aerospace sector, and assembly of a range of automotive parts for e-mobility * Along with an accompanying digital twin system, to visualise and quantify production applications with throughput and cost information. With this, e-Tau will unlock, for manufacturing as a whole: * Improved tolerance to part placement and fit-up for laser welding. * Improved - and maintained - weld quality. * Increased productivity and reduction in repairs and scrap. Reduced and potentially eliminated need for expensive and time-consuming post-weld NDT.

Icing represents a complex and expensive problem in different industrial and energy applications -- aircraft, wind turbines, power lines -- causing incidents and severe accidents. The main mitigation methods rely on mechanical breaking of the ice, electrical heating, and de-icing chemicals. These are expensive, inefficient, unreliable, and environmentally harmful. The aim of the ICELIP project is to develop a passive ice-repellent coating which also provides adequate durability for aircraft applications. This will have impacts not only in aviation, but also in other sectors (other transport: rail, maritime, automotive, and energy: wind turbines, power lines). The main benefits include: increased safety by 4%, more environmentally friendly products (avoiding discharge of 100 million litres of de-icing fluids and cutting emissions of 80million tonnes of CO2 by reducing aircraft weight and, thus, fuel consumption), more cost-efficient products (saving £7bn/year in fuel), and improved energy efficiency (e.g. increasing wind energy production by 20%). The ICELIP project is based on previous R&D work of part of the consortium, focused on the development of an ice-repellent coating comprising nano-additives incorporated in a standard aerospace clear coat. The coating system showed an outstanding combination of ice-repellency and durability (TRL 3-4) which will need further development and testing in order to be suitable for the aerospace market.

"Multi-materials assemblies are designed and joined together to achieve the best performance for specific applications and specific working environments. These assemblies combine the advantages of each material into an advanced structure, capable of working in heterogeneous and harsh conditions. Dissimilar material assemblies are highly functional, save material resources and enable significant weight reduction, which is fundamental for breaking down fuel consumption and CO2 emissions (major targets for the transport industry). However, joining metallurgically incompatible metal alloys or CFRP composites to metal alloys is challenging and often beyond the capacity of a conventional automated production processes. Currently, most challenging multi-materials assemblies are mechanically fastened and/or adhesive bonded. Limitations associated to using these two techniques include extra weight, cost and durability issues. These drawbacks limit the adoption of more advanced multi-material joining applications and reduce potential benefits of optimised designs. Consequently, there is a clear need for new, flexible, cost-effective and rapid methods for joining dissimilar materials, capable of meeting industry performance and manufacturing demands. _ULTIMATE_ focuses on the development of an innovative technology to enable highly dissimilar materials to be fusion welded together using highly productive industrial processes. The _ULTIMATE_ project will primarily focus on dissimilar material combinations of interest to the transport sector, including dissimilar metallic materials, and composite to metallic material joints. Case studies and technology demonstrators will be produced for the aerospace and automotive sectors, although the technology has the potential to be highly versatile and applied to many different applications across other industry sectors."

Laser processing can enable higher productivity in manufacturing aerospace structures. However, the lack of large-scale, cost-effective manipulator has limited the applicability of the process – LaserTAU will address this by combining laser processing with the ‘TAU’ robot platform.

Ice formation on aircraft, wind turbines and power lines is a major cost to industry and an ongoing cause of fatal air crashes and accidents from ice-shedding. Current ice-mitigation technologies rely on mechanical breaking of the ice, electrical heating or application of de-icing chemicals. These are expensive, inefficient, unreliable, and damaging to the environment. The aim of the ICEMART project is to develop a novel passive ice-repellent coating that will prevent ice formation and adhesion without the need for active ice-management. This development will have far-reaching impact across a wide range of sectors, including aviation and energy where it could save hundreds of lives, eliminate the discharge of over 100 million litres of aircraft de-icing fluid, contribute to annual savings of £7bn in fuel and 80Mtonnes of CO2 from aviation and improve wind generation efficiency by 17%. ICEMART technology is based on a novel patented technique for obtaining multi-functional additives that can be incorporated into coating resins making them highly repellent to water and ice, whilst providing a tough and durable coating.

Current socio-economic pressures on the global civil aerospace industry are increasing the utilisation of titanium in aero-structures. Production of parts by existing methods leads to inefficient buy-to-fly ratios (as high as 20:1), which is becoming increasingly uneconomical (high material cost & labour intensive; leading to high repeat costs, long lead times & design constraints) and driving the need for structures to be fabricated by near-net-shape welding processes. Laser welding is emerging as the process of choice since it can produce low distortion welds of good quality and properties at significantly faster speeds than other welding processes. The OLIVER project will further develop knowledge in laser welding titanium and its application to structural aerospace assemblies, and at the same time exploit this knowledge by developing UK manufacturing capability both within the UK supply chain and OEMs. Project OLIVER includes 2 OEM case studies which represent first- to-market opportunities for the technologies to be developed. A further case study is included which will demonstrate the capability of laser welding a strut component in a revolutionary titanium-composite.

The use and cost of Titanium (Ti) alloys in Aerospace continues to grow and escalate, putting ever more pressure on cost-effective manufacturing of parts in Ti. Near net shape forming technologies for Ti alloys are currently under development with the aim of building Ti parts rather than machining them out of solid. Most current approaches however are somewhat limited in terms of productivity, with material deposition rates of around 5kg/hr being common. Linear Friction Welding (LFW) is an innovative solid phase welding technology that is emerging as a new enabling technology for Ti near net shape manufacture. Capable of effective material deposition rates of 50kg/hr, together with excellent weld quality and process repeatability, LFW has the potential to be a game changing technology in this field. The TiFab project will develop and demonstrate Linear Friction Welding (LFW) technology for the cost effective manufacture of near net shape Ti alloy components and will support the ambitions of CAV, a UK tier 1 aerospace supplier, to grow their product offering..