Case Study: AWE and Space Park Leicester
Strengthening our technologies for the future
AWE Nuclear Security Technologies and Space Park Leicester have established a strategic partnership, building on two decades of joint working between the organisations. Our proud shared history includes partnering on the qualification campaign of the Beagle 2 Mars lander programme and the vibration testing for the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), now aboard the James Webb Space Telescope, which produces the most vivid images of our universe to date.
A key development has been the placement of AWE team members at the midlands campus to enable closer collaboration with Space Park Leicester’s researchers, helping to unlock new scientific insights of potential value to AWE space exploration programmes and establishing a fertile environment for the creation of high-tech jobs. Together, we will continue developing innovative environmental testing techniques, capabilities and competence while also creating opportunities to boost STEM talent in the local area.
There is an emerging need to make the environmental testing techniques we use more sophisticated. By combining environments to produce a specification which can answer the questions of how a test item behaves in a multiple dynamic scenario, such as applying spin and vibration techniques at high temperature, we begin to understand the true behaviours of a test item.
Developing our technologies and strategies such as conducting multi axis testing within combined environments, will enable us to qualify product components and systems to a higher fidelity with greater confidence levels.
The culmination of this research and development will be the development of a Teams 18kN Tensor 6 Degree of Freedom (6DoF) machine. This machine will enable up to full system qualification as well as component, sub-system and full system verification and validation as we develop future systems. The ability to encompass the shaker and system in a thermal enclosure will answer the combined environment question. This capability working alongside the spin/vibration capability will provide a more efficient and cost-effective solution to the current single axis, single environment capabilities that AWE and Space Park Leicester have today.
