The EPSRC CDT in Net Zero Aviation in partnership with Industry will collaboratively train the innovators and researchers needed to find the novel, disruptive solutions to decarbonise aviation and deliver the UK's Jet Zero and ATI's Destination Zero strategies. The CDT will also establish the UK as an international hub for technology, innovation and education for Net Zero Aviation, attracting foreign and domestic investment as well as strengthening the position of existing UK companies. The CDT in Net Zero Aviation is fully aligned with and will directly contribute to EPSRC's "Frontiers in Engineering and Technology" and "Engineering Net Zero" priority areas. The resulting skills, knowledge, methods and tools will be decisive in selecting, integrating, evaluating, maturing and de-risking the technologies required to decarbonise aviation. A systems engineering approach will be developed and delivered in close collaboration with industry to successfully integrate theoretical, computational and experimental methods while forging cross theme collaborations that combine science, technology and engineering solutions with environmental and socio-economic aspects. Decarbonising aviation can bring major opportunities for new business models and services that also requires a new policy and legislative frameworks. A tailored, aviation focused training programme addressing commercialisation and route to market for the Net Zero technologies, operations and infrastructure will be delivered increasing transport and employment sustainability and accessibility while improving transport connectivity and resilience. Over the next decade innovative solutions are needed to tackle the decarbonisation challenges. This can be only achieved by training doctoral Innovation and Research Leaders in Net Zero Aviation, able to grasp the technology from scientific fundamentals through to applied engineering while understanding the associated science, economics and social factors as well as aviation's unique operational realities, business practices and needs. Capturing the interdependencies and interactions of these disciplines a transdisciplinary programme is offered. These ambitious targets can only be realised through a cohort-based approach and a consortium involving the most suitable partners. Under the guidance of the consortium's leadership team, students will develop the required ethos and skills to bridge traditional disciplinary boundaries and provide innovative and collaborative solutions. Peer to peer learning and exposure to an appropriate mix of disciplines and specialities will provide the opportunity for individuals and interdisciplinary teams to collaborate with each other and ensure that the graduates of the CDT will be able to continually explore and further develop opportunities within, as well as outside, their selected area of research. Societal aspects that include public engagement, awareness, acceptance and influencing consumer behaviour will be at the heart of the training, research and outreach activities of the CDT. Integration of such multidisciplinary topics requires long term thinking and awareness of "global" issues that go beyond discipline and application specific solutions. As such the following transdisciplinary Training and Research Themes will be covered: 1. Aviation Zero emission technologies: sustainable aviation fuels, hydrogen and electrification 2. Ultra-efficient future aircraft, propulsion systems, aerodynamic and structural synergies 3. Aerospace materials & manufacturing, circular economy and sustainable life cycle 4. Green Aviation Operations and Infrastructure 5. Cross cutting disciplines: Commercialisation, Social, Economic and Environmental aspects 75 students across the UK, from diverse backgrounds and communities will be recruited.

This CDT will train the next generation of manufacturing researchers with unique capabilities to combine predictive models and in-process data, with a systems perspective, to enable faster, more flexible, and more sustainable high value manufacturing. The UK's growth lags behind Europe and North America [1], and the chancellor, whilst celebrating our advanced manufacturing sector, also states [2] that 'poor productivity, skills gaps, low business investment and the over-concentration of wealth in the South-East have led to uneven and lower growth'. Although digital technologies are recognised [3] as a key productivity enabler, integrating these into an advanced manufacturing environment is a significant challenge. Our CDT will address this from a systems perspective by using sensors, communications, controls and informatics technologies that are coupled to the physics underpinning complex manufacturing processes. This vision aligns strongly with the EPSRC's priorities (especially AI Digitalisation and Data); the EPSRC Made Smarter programmes, and the UK Innovation Strategy's [4] digital and manufacturing priorities. However, embedding Digital Manufacturing into the UK economy will require people with new doctoral-level skill sets dedicated to the four productivity challenges in manufacturing: 1. sustainability - an emerging underpinning theme in our stakeholder discussions. 2. speed - reducing production lead time; 3. quality - eliminating rework whilst achieving functional performance; 4. flexibility - adaptive production systems that eliminate intrusive setup/measurement; The CDT will train cohorts that focus on cross-disciplinary research at the interface between these productivity challenges and key Digital Engineering themes identified by our industrial co-creators: (1) mechanics, modelling, and intelligent control / optimisation of processes; (2) sensor networks and monitoring; (3) manufacturing informatics, system integration, and data security. We will focus on key manufacturing processes that are essential to the UK landscape: subtractive manufacturing (machining) and product assembly. We are uniquely placed to enable this approach: we lead the machining capability on behalf of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, collaborate on the Manufacturing Made Smarter Research Centre in Connected Factories, (with a focus on assembly automation), and through Factory 2050 we host the UK's first state of the art factory entirely dedicated to reconfigurable robotic, digitally assisted assembly and machining technologies. We will provide a unique opportunity for students to study alongside peers with a common application focus in machining, assembly, and digital engineering for manufacturing, leveraging the world leading environment provided by the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. This will enable the highest standards of subject-specific research training, underpinned by Sheffield's breadth of activity in engineering science. We will tailor the first year training to support their transition into the centre, and provide cohort experiences that reinforce system-level thinking and leadership skills, to ensure that our alumni's impact on society far exceeds that of a typical PhD student. Training will be undertaken individually, within a cohort, across the centre, and in combination with other centres and groups. Through this approach, we will achieve horizontal and vertical integration of the student experience within the centre and will support students in developing the specific skills required for their research. This will foster a collective culture in key training areas such as leadership, inclusion, innovation and communication, amply preparing students for their future careers. [1] IMF, World Economic Outlook Jan 2023 [2] Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's speech at Bloomberg, 27/1/2023 [3] RAEng/IET Connecting Data Report 2015 [4] UK Innovation Strategy: Leading the future by creating it

We propose a Centre for Doctoral Training in Integrative Sensing and Measurement that addresses the unmet UK need for specialist training in innovative sensing and measurement systems identified by EPSRC priorities the TSB and EPOSS . The proposed CDT will benefit from the strategic, targeted investment of >£20M by the partners in enhancing sensing and measurement research capability and by alignment with the complementary, industry-focused Innovation Centre in Sensor and Imaging Systems (CENSIS). This investment provides both the breadth and depth required to provide high quality cohort-based training in sensing across the sciences, medicine and engineering and into the myriad of sensing applications, whilst ensuring PhD supervision by well-resourced internationally leading academics with a passion for sensor science and technology. The synergistic partnership of GU and UoE with their active sensors-related research collaborations with over 160 companies provides a unique research excellence and capability to provide a dynamic and innovative research programme in sensing and measurement to fuel the development pipeline from initial concept to industrial exploitation.

Currently the dominant approach for cooling and lubricating machining processes, such as drilling, milling and turning, is to use emulsion-based coolants (otherwise known as metalworking fluids) at high flow rates. There are many serious environmental, financial and health and safety reasons for reducing industry's reliance on emulsion coolants - an estimated 320,000 tonnes/year in the EU alone, up to 17% of total production costs, and over 1 million people are exposed regularly to the injurious effects of its additives which can cause skin irritation and even cancers. Serious environmental problems are also caused by the up to 30% of coolant that is lost in leaks and cleaning processes and which eventually ends up polluting rivers. These issues have motivated extensive research efforts to identify more sustainable machining processes. There is growing and compelling evidence from preliminary studies that cryogenic machining with supercritical CO2 (scCO2) with small amounts of lubricant (Minimum Quantity Lubrication, MQL, referred to as scCO2+MQL machining) can provide a high-performing and more sustainable alternative. Current knowledge gaps in the relationships between key input and output variables, the reasons for variations in performance and concerns over the release of CO2, are preventing a major uptake of this technology by UK manufacturers. This project aims to test the hypothesis that optimising combinations of CO2 with small amounts of the appropriate lubricant can provide reliable, step-change improvements in the performance and sustainability of machining operations. It will carry out a systematic investigation into the effect of scCO2+MQL on cutting forces, heat and tool wear mechanisms during machining of titanium, steels and composite stacks. It will develop: (a) advanced experimental methods in combination with full-scale machining trials to explore how lubrication and heat transfer affect machining performance; (b) lifecycle assessment and scavenging methods for sustainable re-use of CO2; (c) machine learning methods to predict the relationships between process inputs and outputs and (d) develop an effective and efficient optimisation methodology for balancing competing financial, performance and sustainability objectives in scCO2+MQL machining. These will deliver the knowledge, experimental and modelling methods and software tools that UK industry needs to exploit this enormous as-yet untapped potential. The project will involves staff and postdoctoral research assistants from the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centres in Sheffield, with advice and guidance from a Project Steering Group comprised of leading international academic and industrial experts. Collectively, the team has the expertise in (a) manufacturing systems and tribology; (b) energy systems and lifecycle assessment; (c) fluid mechanics and heat transfer, and (d) machine learning and optimisation, needed to provide the 'how' and 'why' UK industry needs to reliably achieve or exceed the performance improvements seen in preliminary studies, namely doubling of tool life. We will work with our industrial and business sector collaborators to drive transformations in machining rate, process cost and accompanying safety, environmental and quality metrics for the benefit of the UK's defence, civil nuclear and medical manufacturing industries through the 2020s and beyond.

High value manufacturing is an essential component of the UK economy, contributing strongly to our economic prosperity and engineering status around the world. The growth in high value manufacturing to support aerospace, nuclear and other high integrity engineering components, has placed huge pressure on the rapid delivery of reliable and high quality Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) to inspect these parts. Currently, much inspection of safety critical components (sometimes requiring 100% part inspection) is performed manually, leading to significant bottlenecks associated with the NDE. Existing robots typically follow pre-programmed paths making them unsuitable to handle, inspect and disassemble parts with a significant tolerance or variability. A new end-to-end approach is needed, embracing manufacture, transport through factory, parts alignment, parts tracking, and inspection (both surface form metrology and NDE) with the associated high volume data management feeding into the quality and assurance compliance processes. Exactly the same process bottlenecks occur when we translate the problem to the regime of Remanufacturing, hence the integrated approach taken through this proposal. Remanufacturing has been identified as being central to the creation of economic growth in the UK and global markets. With supplies of resources and energy limited, the transition to a low carbon economy with strong emphasis on resource efficiency is key to the UK's Industrial Strategy. Remanufacturing can support this transition by achieving significant impact in all industrial sectors through preventing waste, improving resource management, generating sustainable economic growth, increasing productivity and enhancing competitiveness. AIMaReM (Autonomous Inspection in Manufacturing& Remanufacturing) provides a unique combination of data collection, processing and visualisation tools combined with efficient robot path planning and obstacle avoidance, with a focus on manufacturing inspection (NDE and surface form metrology). The project will deliver an automated, systems integrated solution, that will be of direct benefit to the manufacturing sector to allow faster integrated inspection and parts handling, thus saving time, and reducing costs whilst enhancing quality and throughput.