Morvern KTP

Start date: 1 November 2025
End date: 30 October 2027
Funder: Innovate UK
Value: £1 million+
Partners and collaborators: Movern Group LTD.
Primary investigator: Dr. Zinedine Khatir
Co-investigators: Dr. Krzysztof Kubiak, Dr Saikat Dutta, Dr Roopika Ravikanna, Dr. Yatin Darbar

Dr Zinedine Khatir has been awarded £1M+ (across several awards) from Innovate UK through knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) awards.

One is an engineering-informed KTP with Leeds business School and another is associate KTP for the School of Mechanical Engineering (~£0.7M) with Morvern Group Ltd. Morvern Group, a Derbyshire-based company, focuses on growing and managing solution-oriented businesses in the investment casting industry, specialising in turbine aerofoils for the aerospace and industrial gas turbine markets.

Morvern Group's primary products, Tooling, Ceramic Cores, Wax Injection & Assembly & Dynamic Profile Machining, have all evolved from the concept of developing specialised, tailormade solutions to meet customers' specific needs. It is estimated that the market for ceramic cores will grow to around $700m by 2028 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ~ 7%. The company recognises that it needs to develop comprehensive in-house materials science, engineering and modelling expertise and capabilities underpinned by rigorous analysis and validation, to maintain and improve its position. The company has no capability to model and optimise its ceramic injection mould processes, leading to a sub-optimal approach with extended leadtimes. Equally, the current manual finishing of the ceramic cores is labour intensive and inefficient.

The school-led KTP will utilise leading expertise in Computational Flow Dynamics (CFD), 3D scanning and imaging as well as AI and Machine Learning to transform existing ceramic injection moulding processes and tool design within Morvern Group, for the investment casting of turbine aerofoils. Expertise in CFD, enhanced 3D modelling and AI/ML technologies from the University will be embedded in the company's R&D department.

Impact

To develop, apply and embed advanced computational fluid dynamics and AI-driven CNC machine vision approaches to significantly increase productivity, process efficiency and quality assurance of ceramic injection moulding and tool design in the investment casting of turbine aerofoils for the aerospace and industrial gas turbine markets.