Within the aerospace and defence sectors, many organisations are using advanced ceramics to solve their materials challenges. Advanced ceramics (sometimes going by the name technical ceramics or engineered ceramics) differ from tradition ceramics in the properties that they exhibit.

Past limitations, such as brittleness, have been addressed through the advent of composite structures and innovative processing routes. As developments continue to expand rapidly, the range of potential applications for the advanced ceramics continues to grow. For over 100 years, we’ve been instrumental in fostering this growth through consultancy and testing of advanced ceramics.

Our advanced ceramic services include:

Materials Development

Technical ceramics are used in a variety of applications throughout the aerospace industry, from high temperature to corrosive environments. Each situation has unique and specific requirements. Our team of experts has experience working across different sectors and material systems. With our pilot scale facilities and comprehensive testing and analytical capabilities, we take ideas and develop them through the laboratories and pilot scale, to commercial scale, quickly.

Materials Selection

We use our state-of-the-art rational materials selection tool and many years of experience to help you choose the properties you need for your product's application.

Process Optimisation

Whether your objective is to increase yields, minimise waste, reduce cost or you want to introduce a new processing line or investigate a new processing technology, our years of experience across different industries will help you improve your processes.

Materials Characterisation

Understanding how your material will perform in service is an essential step in designing your product and bringing it to market. Characterising and analysing the microstructure of raw and post-processed materials are critical to understanding their physical properties. We provides qualitative, quantitative and visual data to support a full understanding of your materials.

Failure Analysis

Often the root cause of failures can be traced back the powders or materials being used, but there are situations where the processing steps (milling, sintering, etc.) are to blame. Our team of experts has seen nearly every scenario and are equipped to identify the failures, and provide solutions so that they don’t happen again.

Current areas of focus:

• Advanced ceramics for harsh environments
• Novel ceramic processing to improve microstructures
• Improving the bond strength between dissimilar materials (e.g. ceramic to metal)
• Ceramic additive manufacturing
• Novel coatings development (thermal and environmental barrier coatings).