Innovative Sit Ski Uses Composite Materials to Deliver Peak Performance to UK Winter Paralympic Team

Composites can offer significant benefits for performance-driven products and, for the UK’s winter Paralympic team, performance is key. The natural evolution of Sit Ski technology is an increased use of engineered materials and state-of-the-art design and manufacturing techniques. 
Four of the UK High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC) centres; the National Composites Centre (NCC), Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and the University of Warwick (WMG) embarked on a project to develop a new and innovative Sit Ski. The end product was a unique demonstration of the UK’s expertise in high value design and manufacturing technologies. 

Primary Topics: 
- Background to the study 
- Collaborative engineering design 
- Advanced simulation techniques 
- Manufacturing capabilities 
- Validation and verification of the design 

Presenters: Andrew Patterson and Chris Young 
Andrew Patterson holds a Masters (hons) degree in Automotive Engineering from the University of Bath and is a Chartered Engineer with the IMechE. He currently leads a team of design and simulation engineers at the NCC, enabling research and development in the application of composite components for UK industry. 

Chris Young holds a Masters (hons) degree in Aerospace Engineering with French from the University of Bath and is a Chartered Engineer with the IMechE. He is responsible for co-ordination and delivery of all Cross-Catapult projects, where the NCC contributes its composites knowledge and expertise to other complementary high value manufacturing technologies to deliver collaborative solutions.