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The development of the latest generation of wide-body carbon-fibre composite passenger aircraft has heralded a new era in the utilisation of these materials. The premise of superior specific strength and stiffness, corrosion and fatigue resistance, is tempered by high development costs, slow production rates and lengthy and expensive certification programmes. Substantial effort is currently being directed towards the development of new modelling and simulation tools, at all levels of the development cycle, to mitigate these shortcomings. One of the primary challenges is to reduce the extent of physical testing, in the certification process, by adopting a ‘certification by simulation’ approach. In essence, this aspirational objective requires the ability to reliably predict the evolution and progression of damage in composites. The aerospace industry has been at the forefront of developing advanced composites modelling tools.