Design & Development

Product Design

Lentus Composites has a team of design engineers to support customer projects. Lentus can engage at many different stages of a project from being responsible for the whole design, or part of the design. Lentus can also manage the whole project or act as a design consultant inputting to a customer lead design such that the product is optimised for the process and the materials to be used.


Many products arrive at Lentus as finished designs and the Lentus engineering team will manage the project and productionise the parts delivering the build instructions, tooling design and quality control procedures so that the parts can be manufactured to meet the customers’ expectations in the required timescales.


Lentus use 3D CAD to design the parts and this design software interfaces with the product data management tools and other business tools to ensure that the integrity of all design data is maintained at all times.

"Lentus can manage the whole project or act as a design consultant inputting to a customer lead design such that the product is optimised for the process and the materials that can be used."

Tooling Design & Manufacture

In order to deliver a project to a customer it is important to have each element of the process within your control.


Tooling and pattern design and manufacture is a good example of this. Lentus Composites has in-house tooling design capability using its 3D CAD systems. Within group, Lentus has direct access to in-house tool manufacture. This allows Lentus to receive an enquiry, optimise the part and then design and manufacture the tooling within the tight timescales required for a motorsport or development project. Alternatively, if Lentus is working on a production contract where volumes are larger, the tooling design can be optimised for the volumes and manufacturing process and these tools can be made in quantities to allow the production rate to be met.


Lentus typically designs tools from steel, aluminium and tooling block.

This capability to design and manufacture tooling also extends to the design and manufacture of process equipment, whether that be a complete filament winding machine or a simpler RTM set up. This is all within the capabilities of the Lentus engineering team.

"Lentus typically designs tools from steel, aluminium and tooling block."

Stress Analysis

Lentus Composites have internal stress analysis capability. Lentus can build up material properties using micro mechanics analysis and then use this data in laminate analysis to develop material laminate properties, or if available use published data for qualified composite systems in further analysis.


Lentus can carry out component and system level Finite Element Analysis to optimise the composite structure and also tune how that composite structure interacts with its mating components under varying external influences such as stress cycling or thermal cycling.

Lentus carries out process analysis and in particular cure cycle kinetics which is a vital part of developing thick walled composites for applications such as composite energy storage flywheels.

"Lentus Composites have internal stress analysis capability."

Analysis & Validation

Lentus Composites have the experience and expertise to validate products and processes. This could be managing the full qualification process for an aerospace product or the validation of a manufacturing process.


Lentus Composites has the equipment to carry out tensile fatigue testing and ultimate failure testing and Torsional fatigue and failure testing. Pressure testing and burst testing is available for product validation.


Materials can be validated through Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC)and TMA methods for extent of cure, glass transition temperature measurement and accurate thermal expansion measurement. Volume fraction and void content can be determined and digital microscopy can be used to assess the quality of the composite such as fibre distribution and orientation. Ultrasonic techniques (A, B and C-Scan) are used to identify cracks, de-lamination, defects or porosity in composite products.

"Lentus Composites has the equipment to carry out tensile fatigue testing as well as ultimate failure testing."

Find out more about complementary products and services

Lentus Composites, together with SST Technology provide an array of products and services; blending engineering disciplines and techniques to meet our client’s needs.

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