EuroWire September 2021

Corporate News

Jim Chura joins Davis-Standard team Davis-Standard has announced that James “Jim” Chura has been hired as an aftermarket sales engineer to support the company’s converting customers in southeast USA and Mexico. enquiries and quotations, and providing after-sales assistance to customers. Mr Chura brings 14 years of industry knowledge to his new role, having held various sales and management positions, most recently as regional sales account manager for ABB of Raleigh, North Carolina. He has broad experience supporting customers in the paper, converting and packaging markets, and will be responsible for driving aftermarket sales, addressing technical aspects of customer Mr Chura is a member of TAPPI (the Technical Association for the Pulp, Paper and Converting Industry), and is TAPPISAFE certified. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri, Columbia. Davis-Standard, LLC www.davis-standard.com Lift off! Bristol researchers’ work heads to ISS Jim Chura ▲ “Jim understands the converting industry and the needs of our customers in the Southeast US,” said Andrew Alaya, Davis- Standard vice president of aftermarket sales. “He has an excellent understanding of customer needs and available converting technologies and upgrades. “This aligns well with our goal of using aftermarket services to help our customers get the most from their equipment investment, while improving profitability and product quality.”

Materials developed by scientists and engineers from the UK’s University of Bristol will be blasted 250 miles from the Earth’s surface and affixed to the International Space Station (ISS). The novel composites will spend six months attached to the ISS, orbiting Earth around 3,000 times at speeds of 17,000 mph. The materials are being placed on the ISS to test them in the hostile space environment, where they will be subjected tomicro- meteoroids, temperatures from -150°C to +150°C, high velocity dust, severe electromagnetic radiation and engineering debris. Real-time data will assess how the materials are performing and will help university scientists on the ground improve materials for the next generation of space missions. Ian Hamerton, professor of polymers and composite materials at the University of Bristol, said, “This project will assess how our composites fare in the extreme space environment. The data ▼ An artist’s impression of the Bartolomeo platform on the ISS. The University of Bristol material will be housed on the bottom left square Photo credit: Airbus

we recover will be used to make a ‘digital twin’ of the physical material, which will help us understand how these materials – and indeed other materials – function. Not only will this improve the performance of our composites but it will help us and others develop even more ambitious space materials.” The materials are part of the Euro Ageing programme, a £3.5mn European Space Agency project that will see 45 materials exposed to the effects of space while encased in a chamber on the Bartolomeo platform, designed for the ISS by Airbus. The team faced a five-month competitive tender process to get their materials accepted on the spring 2022 mission. The composites were developed by two Bristol PhD students, Dr Yanjun (Desmond) He and Mayra Rivera Lopez, who recently won the People’s Choice Award at the annual 3MT (three minute thesis) competition, hosted by the Bristol Doctoral College. Ms Lopez said, “The development and testing of our composites into real space conditions is a big step for us as researchers. Through this mission, we will assess the performance of our already resilient composites, but also, we will obtain a better perspective on ways to keep innovating the composites’ design.” Financial support for the project came from the UK Space Agency, the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the University of Bristol. The materials were developed using facilities within the Bristol Composites Institute, with help from the National Composites Centre. University of Bristol www.bristol.ac.uk ▲ (from left) Prof Fabrizio Scarpa, Prof Ian Hamerton, Prof Kate Robson-Brown, Mayra Rivera Lopez, Dr Joseph Gargiuli and George Worden Photo credit: University of Bristol

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September 2021