Early engineers at the National Composites Center (NCC) helped propel British paracanoeists to Olympic gold at the Paris 2024 Games by developing an optimized boat seat.
NCC team designed and manufactured Paralympic champion Emma Wiggs’ Golden Seat by using digital tools such as embedded sensor technology to reduce material in low-stress areas and enhance critical support where needed I did. The new seat is lighter and five times stiffer, enhancing the power transfer from Emma’s paddle stroke to the boat, increasing speeds over 200 meters. This enabled her to win the Women’s Vaa Single 200m (VL2) title with a time of 58.88 seconds, beating her nearest rival by more than a second and a half.
Speaking about her work with NCC, Emma said: “I have really enjoyed working with the talented team at the National Composites Center and am very grateful for their expertise and innovation in developing and improving my adaptability to move the boat faster. Bringing the best minds to work is a huge benefit and I’m excited to see what we can do together.”
The project was led by NCC research engineer Jacob Holmes, who said: Complete fast-paced and exciting applications. It was also great to work with our partners Piran, Techni Measure and SHD Composites to complete the sheet. ”
James Leyson, a graduate research engineer who worked with Jacob on this project, added: The impact my engineering optimizations had on the world champion’s performance was staggering. ”
The team worked with sensor technology from Techni Measure, proprietary biocontent epoxy prepreg high-performance materials from Composites, and tools from Piran.
While research into paracanoe seats has focused on sports applications, the functionality behind them has strong implications for other fields. For example, continuously tracking the health of parts provides data that enables digital twins (live digital coupling of the state of a physical asset or process with a virtual representation with functional outputs) . The latter helps engineers study the effects of variables during a product’s design, manufacturing, or service life.
Digital twin technology can speed up development time and reduce the need for physical prototypes. It can also improve product quality and performance, reduce waste, and lower costs while enabling predictive maintenance. This enhanced capability will directly support NCC’s ongoing energy transition work impacting the UK, including smarter and more sustainable end-of-life wind turbines and hydrogen storage solutions.
The paracanoe seat is the second collaboration with Emma, who also won a silver medal in the women’s KL2 200m at the Paris Games. The vessel was equipped with a customized paddle designed and manufactured by NCC in collaboration with the Manufacturing Technology Center (MTC). Both NCC and MTC are part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. To read the complete case study, visit nccuk.com/wiggs.
