Mark Crouchen is the managing director of Rockwood Composites, a company in the UK that specialises in manufacturing complex composite components using compression and bladder moulding. These manufacturing processes use fibre mats of carbon fibre, glass fibre, Kevlar, or any other material, which are pre-impregnated with a resin matrix and then placed in a mould, where they are cured at elevated temperature with the addition of external or internal pressure.
The team at Rockwood has been supplying the aerospace, defense, medical and nuclear industries for over 25 years, with customers ranging from Leonardo Helicopters and the McLaren Formula 1 team to Safran and Facebook’s Aquila internet drone. In 2018, Rockwood won the Innovation in Manufacture award at the Composite UK industry event for their innovative use of advanced composite materials on the Tokomak ST40 nuclear fusion reactor. Composite materials have many benefits in terms of their excellent strength and stiffness at low weight. However, there is a common misconception that metal or ceramic components can easily be replaced one-to-one with composite components. The performance of any composite component is closely linked to the quality of the manufacturing process, and designing and manufacturing quality components is an area where Rockwood Composites particularly excel. In this episode of the podcast, Mark and I talk about:
- his background in engineering
- the types of structures that Rockwood Composites manufacture
- why composites manufacturing is a challenge
- and the special solution Rockwood found for the Tokomak ST40 fusion reactor
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