Delivered as part of the RAPRA composites engineering session at the Advanced Engineering UK 2015 Show

Composites in Big Science “Stuck between the physicist and the engineer” Simon Canfer Technology STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Joint Astronomy Centre Hawaii (James Clark Maxwell telescope) Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes La Palma Who are we? STFC is responsible for “big science” in the UK: particle and nuclear physics, astronomy, x-ray light sources, neutron sources and high power lasers + grants to UK universities and research at CERN, ESO, ESRF and ILL

What we do Formulation development for niche applications, often in “Big Science” –Epoxy resins for superconducting magnet vacuum infusion –Filled epoxies for neutron shielding, thermally conductive, low contraction Manufacture of composites- one-offs and short runs from specialist materials Mechanical testing down to 4 Kelvin Thermal analysis (DSC, TGA, DMA,…) Materials advice “will it or won’t it…”

Big Science Leading edge experiments tend to be –International collaborations –Very long timescales (decades) –High risk –Industrial involvement essential to cope with manufacturing scale or quantity Peter Higgs and the ATLAS detector Image © CERN

LHC- the Large Hadron Collider What happened in the Big Bang? Nobel prize for Higgs discovery 2013 Image: CERN

LHC experiments: ATLAS Image © CERN Images STFC Superconducting coil building Image © CERN

Space: MIRI on JWST Mid Infra-Red Instrument on James Webb Space Telescope IR imaging requires low temperatures, 6.7K detector, rest of spacecraft at 40K CFRP hexapod supportprovides this thermal isolation –Thermal conductivity of struts at this temperature measured for thermal design Image: STFC-RAL Image: Wikipedia

Our involvement in ITER Shear-compression test of epoxy in liquid nitrogen Compounding rad-hard gap filler putty Flow test of gap filler mix for TF coils Production of insulation breaks for TF coil helium cooling system

Common requirements Operation at very low temperatures: issues include thermal contraction, thermal conductivity, toughness High stresses Ionising radiation environments One-off or small quantities Limited prototyping –frequently the experiment is it’s own prototype! Composites are often a very good solution

Thanks for your attention