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The process, being investigated by the government-funded High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC), is the testing of goods through modern techniques such as computer modelling rather than solely relying on the destructive physical stress-testing that has long been standard practice in manufacturing.
“Digital technologies, simulation and advances in mathematics offer significant opportunities to optimise the use of physical testing, cutting development costs and time to market. However, transitioning to a certification by analysis approach remains a major challenge and one that requires input from industry and certification organisations,” said the Catapult.
The collaborative Towards Product Certification by Analysis project aims to identify and take critical early steps to accelerate these capabilities in the UK. Led by the Catapult, a team of experts from industry, regulators and academia will be tasked with developing an ‘overall product certification assessment framework’.
New manufacturing techniques, increasing product complexity and the ever-present imperative to keep costs and development times competitive means new regulatory and certification frameworks and techniques are required, the Catapult said.
The certification framework will assess the relative readiness level of individual products to transition to certification by analysis. It will be tested against industrial use cases, with the team producing a more detailed study to establish the first steps towards accelerating certification of composite and steel pressure vessels in current and future applications.
The team will also collate current best practice from across industrial sectors, delivering case studies where certification by analysis techniques have proven effective, and publishing a final report on research findings.
The three-month seed project also includes an initial skills and training gap assessment, to ensure a future framework can be successfully implemented.
HVMC CEO Katherine Bennett CBE said: “It cannot be overstated that customer confidence in the safety, quality and performance of new products is critical to their success. Certification for the net zero world is not simply a case of digitising today’s processes – we need to define a new way whereby complex products are validated and regulated. The UK has an opportunity to lead in this area, accelerating pathways to certification by developing new UK standards that encourage the use of analysis techniques.”
The project is supported by the National Composites Centre, University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, and the Manufacturing Technology Centre.
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