ASTUTE Centre joins BPF and offers funded R&D opportunities to the plastics industry

The ASTUTE Centre, based at Swansea University, fields a team of engineers and scientists dedicated to helping industry solve production problems by the application of advanced sustainable manufacturing technologies. ASTUTE personnel are 100% engaged on working with companies, with the option of calling on academic colleagues for additional expertise, and with access to cutting-edge scientific and testing equipment to deliver impactful and innovative solutions.

Launched in 2010 and funded initially by the European Regional Development Fund to support Welsh manufacturing industry, ASTUTE engaged with more than 750 companies, generating half a billion £ economic stimulus.  Post-Brexit, ASTUTE was appointed as a Partner in the UKRI Analysis for Innovators programme, working alongside a number of other national laboratories. This unique scheme supports short, business-led, collaborative R&D projects providing timely solutions to difficult and often long-standing technical problems affecting existing processes, products or services, to improve productivity and competitiveness. Compared with other funding routes, the bidding process is relatively light, and the funding bid success rate is high. Following a brief company expression of interest and problem outline, companies meet the Analysis for Innovators Partners who can offer help. Funded projects start a few months later and last 3 – 9 months, with funding of £50k to £100k shared between the company and Partner. Shorter projects receive 100% of the shared funding, while longer projects require a proportion of match funding. This flexible funding model ensures businesses can access support tailored to their project's scope and duration, driving innovation and addressing technical challenges effectively. ASTUTE now has substantial experience in helping companies prepare successful bids and has delivered more than 50 projects (2023-2025), including a significant number in the plastics area. 

The core strengths of the ASTUTE team, who collectively bring to bear many decades of post-doctoral R&D experience, are in three areas:

Computational engineering modelling: Create a digital twin of your process offering deeper insights than those achievable through experimental trials, and at a lower cost. Quickly explore changes to product design and process conditions to accelerate the development process, by modelling phenomena such as complex flows and heat transfer during processing, structural performance of products or a wide range of other multi-physics scenarios.

Advanced material technology: Characterise materials from the macro- to the nano-scale.  Analyse for composition of solids, melts and vapours. Explore degradation in controlled environments or due to re-processing. Assess feasibility of recycling. Formulate and test blends and additives.

Machine learning: Where large amounts of data are available, machine learning is a very powerful tool for providing insights, unearthing non-obvious relationships between process conditions and product performance, identifying the source of problems or even predicting process settings or formulations to achieve a given outcome.  Customised software applications can be delivered to companies to update as further data becomes available, improving accuracy, predictions and process optimisation. 

ASTUTE’s experience with plastic companies reveals a growing focus on implementing recycling and extended producer responsibly, and adopting bio-based and biodegradable alternatives, to achieve sustainability and reduce C-footprint. While seeking commercial benefit, as well as responding to ethical concerns and consumer preferences, companies are facing increasing pressure from regulatory and tax actions, compelling them to explore areas where they have not previously operated and where expertise and facilities are lacking.

 From a range of projects involving plastics, here are a couple of Astute case snapshots:

A company manufacturing for the healthcare sector wishes to introduce recycled material into their production of injection moulded bins for medical sharps. Key performance requirements arise from the need to transport the filled bins under refrigeration to incineration sites. They therefore need to withstand a drop test at -18°C while also resisting puncture by the sharps, requiring a combination of toughness and hardness – material properties that are generally mutually exclusive. The solution is provided by very careful selection of a polypropylene copolymer, but substituting this with recycled material raised difficult issues. ASTUTE helped the company identify a suitable source of recycled PP and took a twin track approach to incorporating this into production:

Material properties under impact conditions were characterised and used in computer simulations of the drop test to explore modifications to the bin design to better withstand impact.

Experimental tests were carried out on a wide range of blends of virgin and recycled materials and impact modifiers.

Computer simulation of the drop test gave accurate predictions of the fracture patterns.

Test results for blends at -18°C show how achieving high hardness is easy, but simultaneous high impact strength is difficult. Nevertheless, some successful blends were found.  

As outcomes from the project, the company is now incorporating recycled material into production and has received additional support from WRAP* to advance further towards the Circular Economy.

*Waste Resources and Action Programme, the global environmental action NGO.  

A company manufacturing office equipment has a well-established product End-of-Life returns system and a strong commitment to Extended Producer Responsibility. High impact polystyrene is recovered from returned items and the company wishes to look at using this in production and understand how repeated re-use may result in property degradation. ASTUTE tested the HIPS properties after each of multiple cycles of injection moulding, regrind to flake and re-processing without compounding. Tests after environmental exposure were also used to assess possible in-use degradation. It was found that the HIPS withstood repeated re-processing robustly and that degradation in the use environment was not significant (for detail search DOI: 10.1177/14777606231168653). The company is now using reclaimed material 100% in high value production.

Left: Mechanical properties are retained after repeated processing cycles.   Right: A small reduction in glass transition temperature does not require changes to process conditions.

To know more about ASTUTE and the Innovate-UK Analysis for Innovators funding, please contact:

Dr Fawzi Belblidia, ASTUTE Technical Director.   

Tel: +44 (0)1792 606977

Email: [email protected]

Office: A208, Engineering Central,

Swansea University Bay Campus,

Fabian Way, Crymlyn Burrows,

Swansea, SA1 8EN

Or visit https://www.swansea.ac.uk/science-and-engineering/research/engineering/astute/