Composites design is something that’s coming up a lot during my meetings with vendors. Only the other week I was looking at some simulation tools for simulation crack propagation across composite, multi-layered materials (that would be with the delightful chaps from Simulia when looking at Abaqus 6.10) as well as the composite design related tools in NX 7.5 from Siemens. Why the sudden concentration on composites? Facts are that these material types are becoming more and more commonplace outside of their traditional usage in Automotive. Only just this week the world’s first plastic plane (the Boeing 787) has landed on british soil for the first time at the Farnborough Airshow. Ok ok, it’s 50% carbon fibre but who can resist an overused cliche eh?.

Lamborghini’s new Composites centre brings a new level of expertise in an rapidly expanding field

Then an intriguing little press release popped into my inbox. It turns out that Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A has just opened a new Advanced Composites Research Center (ACRC) at its headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese, where the team will carry out research on innovative design and production methods for carbon-fibre elements. This has been built alongside development of an proprietary all-new, highly efficient production process for extremely complex carbon-fibre structures which has been “secured through an array of patents and constitutes a breakthrough into the next generation of carbon-fibre components.”

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