The first Intelligent Manufacturing Academic Forum, hosted by the Sino-British University Engineering Education and Research Consortium and organised by Tianjin University and Queen’s University Belfast, met online on 17-18 December. Fifteen experts from Chinese and British universities presented on high-performance industrial robots, robotic assembly and machining, additive manufacturing, bionic design and manufacturing, and extreme manufacturing – comparing notes on bottlenecks and future directions.
Intelligent remanufacturing is an important tool for green, low-carbon manufacturing. Professor van Dijk, fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and head of Birmingham University’s school of mechanical engineering, used cylinder head manufacturing as an example: intelligent remanufacturing can cut greenhouse gas emissions 62%, energy use 86% and raw material consumption 99% – but disassembly of used parts is hard, and supply and demand face multiple uncertainties. Industry 4.0-based intelligent sensing and human-machine collaboration can enable full life-cycle prediction management and higher disassembly efficiency; several Chinese scholars are collaborating on automated disassembly research.
High-quality, high-efficiency machining of large precision components is a key problem for aerospace. Professor Liu Haitao’s team at Tianjin University proposed a machining scheme based on hybrid serial-parallel robots – a viable alternative to large traditional machine tools, balancing speed, precision, rigidity and flexibility between machine tools and conventional industrial robots. Chinese and British scholars also exchanged intentions to collaborate on digital twin applications in large precision machining.
Professor Qin Xuda of Tianjin University’s mechanical engineering school noted that national key R&D programmes and natural science foundation international cooperation projects have supported broad exchange between Tianjin University and British universities in recent years – this forum came at the British scholars’ invitation to share the latest results.
Professor Jin Yan of Queen’s University Belfast, the forum’s chair, introduced the consortium: the first university alliance dedicated to engineering education and research in Sino-British cooperation, founded in 2017 by Southeast University and Queen’s University Belfast, now with 18 member universities.
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