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In July, I travelled to Nantes with four colleagues to participate and present our papers at ECCM21. It was a 4-day bi-annual event that offered the platform for extensive knowledge sharing and networking with more than 1000 participants from industry and academia, over 850 presentations and 200 posters.
On the first day, Jasmine Bone, Research Fellow at the University of Surrey / AWE Centre of Excellence on Materials Ageing, Performance and Life Prediction and NPL visiting researcher gave a talk on Micromechanical property characterisation of water absorption in carbon fibre epoxy composites using nanoindentation. She presented her research on fibre/matrix interface degradation due to long-term real-life degradation. The work has direct impact in understanding and eventually predicting the long-term performance of materials in extreme environments, like those encountered in offshore wind turbines.
Next to present was Ana Yong who discussed her work on the Measurement of out-of-plane permeability and textile compressibility: results of the 2nd international benchmarking exercise and road to
standardisation. A summary of the outcomes from the 2nd international benchmarking was presented and debated as well as the status of the ISO standards on the two methods that NPL is currently leading via the ISO/TC 61 committee (see ISO/AWI 24819 and ISO/AWI 24823).
Later, Jamin Vincent presented his research on the Ensuring measurement confidence in recycled carbon fibres that investigates the applicability of existing measuring standards to recycle carbon fibres. He tested this theory by comparing the mechanical properties of the recycled carbon fibres against the original material. In his presentation, Jamin explained that developing standards and good practices to qualify recycled fibres is absolute necessary to give emphasise the circularity in composite materials.
Nilmini Dissanayake presented on Enhancing data quality in life cycle assessment (LCA) for composite materials during primary data acquisition. Making sustainable decisions is increasingly based on results from life cycle assessment studies. For these to be accurate and comparable need to really on a trusted data inventory. The team has been working on defining a framework for acquiring primary specific to composite materials and their applications. 
Lastly, I presented the team’s latest development on Optimising grip designs for the tensile testing of fibre-reinforced polymer composites at cryogenic temperatures. As a member of the international scientific committee for the conference, I was delighted to organise a special session on cryogenic testing of composite materials, which was 
greatly attended and offered a forum for fruitful discussions in this emerging field.
Looking back, this was a very successful event where the team had the opportunity to showcase our development in materials metrology, hold insightful conversations to inform our next steps in these and other areas as well as meet old friends and make new ones.
Papers were published on the official ECCM21 proceedings.
Find out more about NPL’s work with the composite materials
08 Aug 2024