WMG has taken part in a high profile event attended by global leaders in the engineering industry aimed at promoting cutting-edge technology and celebrating 50 years of the Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (CWLEP) was among the partners of the ‘Driving Technological Change within British Manufacturing’ event in the build-up to the British Grand Prix last weekend.
Around 240 delegates attended the one-day event which attracted industry leaders and organisations to discuss a wide range of topics in a series of seminars and question and answer panels.

Mark Amor-Segan, Principal Engineer within the Energy & Electrical Systems team at WMG, facilitated a seminar on Energy Capture and Storage, focusing on the electrification of vehicles within motorsport and automotive, looking at optimum configurations to achieve best performance. The session also included Sylvain Filippi, Chief Technical Officer for the Virgin Racing Formula E Team and Paul Bostock, Senior Manager, Hybrids and Electrification at Jaguar Land Rover.

WMG has continued to progress its ambitious expansion plans announcing the appointment of a number of new major academic posts in several key areas.

WMG continues to attract world class Professors with recent appointments in the areas of steels processing, cyber security, advanced propulsion and structural composites. This builds on the nine appointments made last year in the areas of E-Health Innovation, Nanocomposites, Supply Chain and Operations, Automation Systems, Vehicle Electrification and Energy Storage, Low Carbon Materials, Energy for Low Carbon Vehicles and Digital Manufacturing.

Engineering students at the University of Warwick are working to achieve their dream of designing and building a human-powered submarine.

On July 7, the Warwick Sub team of seven finalists will be competing in the four-day European International Submarine Race (eISR) at Gosport’s Ocean Basin, the biggest covered water space in Europe. However, their first challenge on the path to glory will be raising enough funds to enable them to manufacture the vessel.

The University of Warwick is helping students with physical disabilities from a local college become their own product designers so they can 3D-print personalised objects that help them in their everyday lives.

Students at Hereward College in Coventry, located close to the University of Warwick campus, are tapping into university expertise in additive layer manufacturing (commonly known as 3D printing) and adaptive systems so they can create assistive equipment that is adapted to their own personal needs.

By learning to use computer-assisted design technology through sessions with staff and students from the University of Warwick, a group of Hereward students with restricted physical movement have come up with solutions to every-day challenges, such as eating and drinking, which they can print out with the click of a button.

The first stage involved making parts in a rubbery material using innovative additive manufacturing technology. After review from PBFA, the next stage involved creating two designs before the final approved design could be manufactured were created before the part was approved. This helped Barkley Plastics win an order from PBFA to manufacture them and subsequently sell in M&S stores.

Bank card and other plastic product manufacturers will have access to a powerful new technology that will help the fight against counterfeiting of their products and which can provide an additional security feature for credit cards, thanks to new technology devised by researchers at WMG at the University of Warwick.

The technology will allow manufacturers to rapidly embed individual, unique and hidden individual pieces of data in each item made in large production runs of plastic products or credit cards as they are being created by injection moulding.

The researchers, led by WMG Professor Gordon Smith at the University of Warwick have just applied for patents to protect the new technology which uses the influence of a particular external force that exploits the polarity of particles and fluids, to very selectively influence those particles or a polymer fluid as a product is formed by injection moulding.

On Tuesday 25 June, Drayson Racing’s lightweight electric racing car set a new world land speed record for an electric vehicle. The Lola B12/EV hit a maximum speed of 204.2mph (328.6kph) in its attempt at RAF Elvington in Yorkshire, breaking the previous record of 175mph which was set in 1974.

Over the last 6 months, WMG has worked with Drayson Racing on the car’s development, drawing on WMG’s expertise in sustainable materials and energy management.

WMG researchers developed recycled carbon fibre panels which were used on the Drayson car, research which was the result of a WMG EPSRC Challenging Engineering grant. Through WMG’s Energy Innovation Centre, testing and characterisation work was carried out on the vehicle’s electric motor to enable the maximum power possible to be achieved. This helped to contribute to the success of the Drayson racing vehicle.

WMG at the University of Warwick in the UK has appointed one of Ghana’s leading researchers into future manufacturing technology.

Dr Kwabena Agyapong-Kodua, who was born in Kwahu-Amanfrom in the Eastern Region and lived in Tema, Greater Accra Region, has taken up the role of assistant professor at WMG, an academic department at the University of Warwick and one of the world’s leading research groups at the forefront of innovative technology.

Dr Agyapong-Kodua’s main research focus at WMG will be cost-effective evolvable manufacturing systems – or in other words how a factory production line can adapt to changes in product and process requirements using artificial intelligence.

Professor Sridhar Seetharaman has been selected to become Editor of the US-based journal, Metallurgical and Materials Transactions (MMT).

MMT is produced jointly by two societies, The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society and ASM International. It includes three editions of its journals, Journal A (Physical Metallurgy and Materials Science), Journal B (Process Metallurgy) and the soon-to-be-launched Journal E (Energy Materials). Professor Seetharaman will be serving as Editor of all three editions from July 2013.

Professor Seetharaman holds the Royal Academy of Engineering / Tata Steel Research Chair in Low Carbon Materials Technologies at WMG where he leads research on physico-chemical aspects of iron and steel manufacturing and usage with an emphasis on energy efficiency, low carbon and reduction of emissions.

On 20^th June, the Manufacturing Advisory Service and WMG are running a unique event introducing manufacturers to MAS’s New Product Development Gateway programme, as well as a range of innovative technology and tools available at WMG’s International Institute for Product and Service Innovation.

The event will help local manufacturing SMEs create products that will give them a competitive advantage.

The Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) and WMG have a long history of working together and are both part of the West Midlands Manufacturing Consortium that delivers MAS support across the region.

During the day, the following sessions will be held:

Low Volume Manufacturing

A practical session offering an introduction to Additive Layer Manufacturing Technology and how it is possible to develop prototypes and tooling through this technology.

Product Benefits

A session using a "Design with Intent" toolkit to look at what specific behaviours you can derive through clever product design and how you can better meet user requirements.

Social Media as an Intelligence Tool

How chatter and discussion on Twitter et al can help you determine what your competitors are doing and how you might use social media to create advocates and a community to ultimately sell your products.