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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/P006930/1
Title: Future Advanced Metrology Hub
Principal Investigator: Jiang, Professor Dame X
Other Investigators:
McLeay, Dr T Fletcher, Dr S Bills, Dr P
Mullineux, Professor G Coupland, Professor JM Mahfouf, Professor M
Scott, Professor PJ Morgan, Dr B Longstaff, Professor AP
Bailey, Dr N Zeng, Dr W Gao, Dr F
Martin, Dr HP Huntley, Professor JM Keogh, Professor P
Turner, Dr MS Blunt, Professor L Kadirkamanathan, Professor V
Ruiz, Dr PD Kinnell, Professor P
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Airbus Operations Limited AMRC with Boeing AWE
BorgWarner Ltd British Standards Institution BSI Campden BRI
Carl Zeiss Ltd (UK) Centre for Process Innovation CPI (UK) Cooke Optics Ltd
Cummins (Group) Danish Standards Foundation Delcam International plc
Depuy Synthes DMG Mori Seiki UK Ltd DRTS
ETH Zurich GKN Aerospace (Melrose) Hexagon Metrology Ltd
Holroyd Machine Tools Gears & IBM UK Ltd Insphere Ltd
Jaguar Land Rover Limited Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership Machine Tool Technologies Ltd
Manufacturing Technologies Association Moog Controls Ltd National Composites Centre
National Physical Laboratory NPL Newburgh Engineering Co Ltd NTR Precision Tooling Engineers
Nuclear AMRC OCF Parametric Technology (U K) Ltd
Physical-Technical Federal Agency PTB Reliance Precision Ltd Renishaw
Rolls-Royce Plc (UK) Singapore Institute of Mfg Technology Taylor Hobson Ltd
The Manufacturing Technology Centre Ltd United Grinding Group AG United States Department of Commerce
University of Leeds University of North Carolina Charlotte University of Southampton
University of Stuttgart Zeeko Ltd
Department: Sch of Computing and Engineering
Organisation: University of Huddersfield
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 01 March 2017 Ends: 30 August 2024 Value (£): 10,813,543
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Manufact. Enterprise Ops& Mgmt Manufacturing Machine & Plant
Materials testing & eng. Optical Devices & Subsystems
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Aerospace, Defence and Marine Manufacturing
Healthcare Transport Systems and Vehicles
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
14 Jul 2016 Manufacturing Hubs 2016 Interviews Announced
13 Jun 2016 Manufacturing Hubs 2016 Full Sift Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
The vision of the Hub is to create ground-breaking embedded metrology and universal metrology informatics systems to be applied across the manufacturing value chain. This encompasses a paradigm shift in measurement technologies, embedded sensors/instrumentation and metrology solutions. A unified approach to creating new, scientifically-validated measurement technologies in manufacturing will lead to critical underpinning solutions to stimulate significant growth in the UK's productivity and facilitate future factories.

Global manufacturing is evolving through disruptive technologies towards a goal of autonomous production, with manufacturing value-chains increasingly digitised. Future factories must be faster, more responsive and closer to customers as manufacturing is driven towards mass customisation of lower-cost products on demand. Metrology is crucial in underpinning quality, productivity and efficiency gains under these new manufacturing paradigms.

The Advanced Metrology Hub brings together a multi-disciplinary team from Huddersfield with spokes at Loughborough, Bath and Sheffield universities, with fundamental support from NPL. Expertise in Engineering, Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science will address the grand challenges in advanced metrology and the Hub's vision through two key research themes and parallel platform activities:

Theme I - Embedded Metrology will build sound technological foundations by bridging four formidable gaps in process- and component-embedded metrology. This covers: physical limits on the depth of field; high dynamic range measurement; real-time dynamic data acquisition in optical sensor/instruments; and robust, adaptive, scalable models for real-time control systems using sensor networks with different physical properties under time-discontinuous conditions.

Theme II - Metrology Data analytics will create a smart knowledge system to unify metrology language, understanding, and usage between design, production and verification for geometrical products manufacturing; Establishment of data analytics systems to extract maximal information from measurement data going beyond state-of-the-art for optimisation of the manufacturing process to include system validation and product monitoring.

Platform research activities will underpin the Hub's vision and core research programmes, stimulate new areas of research and support the progression of fundamental and early-stage research towards deployment and impact activities over the Hub's lifetime.

In the early stage of the Hub, the core research programme will focus on four categories (Next generation of surface metrology; Metrology technologies and applications; In-process metrology and Machine-tool and large volume metrology) to meet UK industry's strategic agenda and facilitate their new products.

The resulting pervasive embedding and integration of manufacturing metrology by the Hub will have far reaching implications for UK manufacturing as maximum improvements in product quality, minimization of waste/rework, and minimum lead-times will ultimately deliver direct productivity benefits and improved competitiveness. These benefits will be achieved by significantly reducing (by 50% to 75%) verification cost across a wide swathe of manufacture sectors (e.g. aerospace, automotive, electronics, energy, medical devices, optics, precision engineering) where the current cost of verification is high (up to 20% of total costs) and where product quality and performance is critical.

Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Impacts
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Summary
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Further Information:  
Organisation Website: http://www.hud.ac.uk