GKN Aerospace Global Technology Centre – Bristol (GTC)

GKN Aerospace’s Global Technology Centre forms an ecosystem of universities, research and technology organisations, catapults, government organisations and industrial partners.

The centre is designed to house 300 engineers within an open, modern and collaborative environment, with access to cutting edge equipment, IT and problem solving tools for use training developing staff and within research projects.

GTC objectives:

• Investigate the optimum application & insertion of emerging technologies into products
• Develop advanced capabilities for high rate aerospace manufacturing
• Increase collaboration within our ecosystem: hosts 300 engineers – GKN Aerospace, Universities, Catapults, Research Institutes, Start-ups & SME’s, Customers, Suppliers, Industrial Partners
• Enable agile innovation and exploration of disruptive technologies for future aircraft including digital manufacturing capabilities
• Train and develop the UK aerospace technical community as well as the next generation of Engineers – Business & technical support/advice to start-ups, SMEs & aerospace supply chain
• Showcase GKN Aerospace and its ecosystem capabilities

In a short period of time the site has been utilised by over 50 organisations including for large collaborative programmes of work such as Wing of Tomorrow, ASCEND and H2GEAR while providing support and facilities access to start-ups and SMEs.

Within Airbus’s Wing of Tomorrow project, GKN Aerospace produced three full scale Fixed Trailing Edge assemblies at the GTC, achieving a TRL maturity 5. This programme also secured significant Intellectual Property within the forming, infusion, curing and assembly processes required to produce such a large composite assembly at high rate and quality. This has positioned the UK in a strong position for maturing these technologies and industrialisation towards maintaining and growing wing engineering and manufacturing workshare in future.

Supporting engineers of the future, Weston College has established a 30 person capacity teaching facility to progress degree apprentices, not just for GKN, but for all companies in region, including Airbus and Rolls-Royce.

The centre has been a continuous thread of partnership with electric flight / urban air mobility emerging OEMs where combination of GKN Aerospace’s expertise and floorspace at GTC has aligned to enable support for multiple demonstrator programmes of work. This includes Vertical Aerospace’s all-electric flying demonstrator, the VX4, which was assembled here.

Similarly, the first fully-integrated wings, empennage and electrical wiring interconnection systems (EWIS) for Eviation’s Alice all-electric aircraft and the full composite wing assembly and booms for Supernal’s first demonstrator aircraft were all assembled at the GTC.