Ton up for university SME support programme
A project supporting SMEs in the development of innovative new products and services has clocked up an important milestone.
The University of Wolverhampton’s Innovative Project Support Service (iPSS), part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund, supports SMEs through the early stages of developing a new product or process, with the aim of bringing it closer to market.
Working with partners at Aston University and Birmingham City University, the project offers free support from experienced consultants with specialist knowledge of a firm’s business sector and development needs.
Support includes product design, engineering analysis, market research, intellectual property advice, electronics development, commercial reviews, implementation of sensor technologies and new product development & planning.
The service has been such a success that it now helped its first 100 businesses.
Professor Andrew Pollard, project director said: “The project gives companies an introduction to working in collaboration with the University, and that initial engagement often grows into a bigger partnership.
“We are aiming to assist over 200 companies by March 2019 so the level of support available is significant to businesses. The project also includes funded support for a number of research collaborations. These are designed to support eligible research projects carried out by University researchers in collaboration with SME companies, and we’ve got high aims to grow and develop our research impact through this.”
Lichfield-based Advanced Innovative Engineering is one of the firms to have benefitted from the service.
The firm designs and manufactures Wankel rotary engines, which have a wide range of applications including aviation, marine and automotive.
Many of the engines AIE produce are for the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles – or drones) market.
Mass is a key concern for the company, which was frequently being asked by customers to reduce the mass of their assemblies. Most of AIE’s componentry is produced from aluminium, either machined from billet or from castings.
AIE considered the next step in its product evolution to be the introduction of carbon composite materials. It commissioned consultant James Jones to conduct an IPSS project in order to research the feasibility of introducing carbon composites into certain components. The prop shaft was the first part to be identified.
Mr Jones graduated from the University of Wolverhampton with a first class BEng degree in mechanical engineering. He is a chartered mechanical engineer with experience in the automotive braking and crane design industries. He has worked with companies including Morgan cars, Siemens, Jacobs, Balfour Beatty and those within the nuclear industry.
He began by researching the previous use of composite prop shafts and found that the technology had been successfully used for automotive prop shafts. It was clear that not only was the mass saving an advantage, but the increased stiffness could be used to create longer, one-piece shafts where complex two-piece shafts had been previously used.
He continued to research theory and produced detailed design calculations, which proved very useful to the firm. Designs were produced based on these calculations.
A great many factors needed to be considered for a successful design, including torsional stiffness and resonance, bending stiffness and whirling resonance, fatigue strain, buckling resistance, methods of assembly and mass.
The research found that a 20% reduction in the mass of the shaft was possible for this like-for-like carbon composite-based redesign. The IPSS project is now set to progress into a research collaboration with the University of Wolverhampton, leading to prototype production and manufacture.
