GKN Aerospace opens U.K. technology center

GKN Aerospace (Redditch, U.K.) held an aviation industry forum to celebrate the opening of its new Global Technology Centre (GTC) in Bristol, U.K. The event, “Shaping a sustainable future of flight,” brought together the wider U.K. aerospace industry.

Speakers during the event included Trevor Higgs, general manager of Airbus UK (Bristol, U.K.), Paul Stein, chief technology officer (CTO) of Rolls-Royce (Manchester, U.K.), as well as GKN Aerospace’s chief executive officer, David Paja, and John Pritchard, president of GKN Aerospace’s Civil business.

In addition to keynote speeches, two panel discussions were held: the first on “Building a more sustainable and better connected future of flight,” and the second on “Developing the workforce of the future.” An academic zone also displayed sustainable aviation solutions of the future proposed by students from Bath, UWE and Bristol Universities, with further academic input from Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle Universities.

GKN says its 10,000-square-meter center focuses on sustainable aviation research and development, including hydrogen propulsion technologies, advanced composite structures for electric aircraft, additive manufacturing and Industry 4.0 processes to enable the high-rate production of aircraft structures. The GTC has already delivered the first fully integrated wings, empennage and electrical wiring interconnect system (EWIS) to Eviation (Arlington, Wash., U.S.) for the Alice all-electric aircraft. The center also serves as the base for GKN Aerospace’s £54 million hydrogen-propulsion development program H2GEAR, and hosts GKN Aerospace’s technology partnership in Airbus’ Wing of Tomorrow (WOT) technology program.

The GTC was jointly funded by GKN Aerospace (£17 million) and the UK government (£15 million), through the Aerospace Technology Institute (Bedford, U.K.). At full capacity, the collaboration center is said to host 300 engineers from GKN Aerospace and its partners. It also includes a training center — affiliated to Weston College — to provide technical skills and help develop the next-generation of aerospace engineers.