by cidaut | May 19, 2015 | Materials
At the end of April, the EC officially communicated Cidaut the outcome of the evaluation for REMAGHIC proposal. It was favourably evaluated within the H2020 SPIRE-07-2015 call, and the grant preparation process started immediately.
REMAGHIC, New Recovery Processes to produce Rare Earth-Magnesium Alloys of High Performance and Low Cost, aims at contributing to Europe’s rare earth recovery and magnesium recycling technologies, improving the efficiencies of these processes and advancing the technology readiness levels for a new generation of industrial processes that will produce new low cost competitive alloys for a wide variety of sectors across Europe’s manufacturing value chain.
The project motivation lies on the fact that magnesium alloys can offer a significant weight reduction when compared to aluminium alloys. Weight reduction is a cross sectorial key design driver, if a superior energy absorption and vibratory behaviour is added, magnesium is a promising candidate for future application if some of its drawbacks are overcome, such as its cost, manufacturability problems, corrosion and creep behaviour and low allowable service temperature. Addition of rare-earth elements (REE) improves the performance of Mg alloys significantly, though a price increase has to be taken into account. REMAGHIC believes that by investing in recovery and recycling technologies, a new alloying process can be developed to yield low cost Mg+REE alloys.
REMAGHIC will contribute to the penetration of magnesium alloys in important sectors for the European industry (Transport, Energy, Biomedicine); it will foster the work done by Tier1s, and promote the interest of different OEMs on future generations of light structural components of competitive performance (that of primary Mg+REE alloys), low cost (that of primary Mg) and weight reduction (30%).This will encourage further improvements in these technologies thanks to finding new markets and applications that will foster the recovery of different REE.
REMAGHIC Work Plan Structure & Raw Materials Industrial Value Chain
Even though there are many Mg+REE alloys in the market, none of these is obtained from fully recovered/recycled raw materials. The development of an alloying processes that takes into account a different variety of recovered REE (which are expected to come in different forms), and includes recycled Mg (assessing its quality meets the same standards as a primary Mg) is totally unprecedented and will have a multifaceted impact, improving efficiency and competitiveness, promoting sustainable manufacturing, contributing to reduce the manufacturing processes environmental impact, strategically sheltering Europe from supply shortages and enabling better societal life quality.
The consortium includes Cidaut as coordinator, Tecnalia, Fraunhofer ICT, and KU Leuven as research partners, and Grupo Antolin, Relight, ITRB, Piaggio Aero, Pininfarina and Meotec as industrial partners. The EC has granted REMAGHIC a 3,253,442 € funding for this H2020 SPIRE project.
by cidaut | May 19, 2015 | Sin categoría
The INROADS FP7 project led by TRL with seven European partners has developed intelligent road studs (also known as cats eyes) containing LED lighting, sensors and communication technologies, which will enable enhanced traffic management and road user information, representing a major advance over the existing retroreflective studs. During the development of the studs, several designs and technologies were considered for vehicle detection, with low power consumption and wireless communication as essential requirements to meet.
For the final validation tests, some INROADS studs were installed in a closed test track at CIDAUT facilities. The aim of these tests was to validate their global operation and achieve some preliminary results and guidelines in relation to the installation of the studs and their effect and benefits on night driving. Thus, a thorough photometric study was carried, analyzing visibility and glare of the LED studs in use. Besides, drivers’ feelings and behavior have been evaluated by CIDAUT human factors team. An instrumented vehicle has also been used to record drivers’ speed and trajectory in order to compare the data with and without the studs.
The result: a sensor network consisting of embedded LED studs able to detect passing vehicles and communicate with each other and with a central control in order to light your way as you drive along, highlighting the lane delineation and enhancing visibility without glare. So far, tests have demonstrated a very positive effect on night driving, increasing comfort, perceived safety and easiness of driving. Also, it has been proved that they cause no glare at all, while they have a greater conspicuity and visibility compared to standard retroreflective studs. This implies a significant safety benefit, particularly on unlit roads. In such situations, they offer an extremely attractive and cost effective solution to traditional street lighting, in that they offer many of the safety benefits, but with a much lower capital and operational cost.
And in case you are worrying about energy and power consumption, there is no need to: they are also able to harvest renewable energy from their environment thanks to some integrated solar photovoltaic panels. Thus, not only are these studs intelligent, but also energetically self-sufficient.
So after three years of hard work of all seven partners involved, we are proud to present the first intelligent self-powered LED studs. Now we can say that we have enlightened a little the way to intelligent roads. Future is drawing nearer.
by cidaut | May 19, 2015 | Sin categoría
One of the aims of Clean Sky is to develop new technologies for green manufacturing through Integrated Technology Demonstrators (ITDs) within the frame of both Green Regional Aircraft (GRA) and Eco-Design (ED) platforms, with the objective to realize low weight/eco-friendly aircraft components featuring competitive manufacturing costs. To achieve this purpose ALENIA AERMACCHI, (Leader of the GRA ITD and Member of the ED ITD) has conducted several studies and launched initiatives aiming to develop, optimize and industrialize Liquid Resin Infusion (LRI) processes. Executed out of autoclave (without pressure), the required solution shall reduce weight, related environmental impact and reduce life cycle costs, for the one shot manufacturing of wing box stiffened panels in composite material.
Under these initiatives, CIDAUT has led the research project named “Panel Liquid Infusion Technology” (PLIT), (Topic Manager SICAMB), which was launched within the GRA “Low Weight Configuration” domain, and was set up to provide a scientific approach to the physics of the LRI process by the development of a “process simulation numerical model”, to study resin flow during the impregnation stage.
The PLIT project consortium was led by CIDAUT Foundation, in charge of development and validation of simulation models and the test bench. ITRB was involved in the tools detailed design and PBLH International Consulting was in charge of dissemination activities.
The LRI simulation model set up by CIDAUT allows identifying potential causes for non uniform distributions of resin flow that may cause injection process faults like dry spots, poor saturation of the pre-form, partially filled composite parts and other defects. An outcome of the model is shown in figure 1. Filling time was used to correlate experimental and simulation results.
Figure 1 Correlation between simulation and laboratory tests to determine permeabilities
Two main technical objectives were addressed by CIDAUT in the PLIT project:
- Development of an optimized LRI process simulation methodology especially suited for analyzing large parts and stiffened wing skin panels.
- Research to gain in-depth understanding of the flow phenomena based on experimental data and try-out.
The simulation model development required full understanding of the most significant phenomena in flow processing and development of dedicated methodologies in laboratory to characterize key material parameters of carbon reinforcements, epoxy resins and distribution media affecting resin flow in LRI processes (an example is shown in figure 2).
Figure 2 Correlation between simulation and laboratory tests to determine permeabilities
Compared to a full 3D resin flow computation, commonly used in infusion processes analysis, the optimized numerical model developed by CIDAUT leads to significant reduction in computation time, while accurately predicting resin flow from the distribution media through the laminate thickness. The model is parametric and user friendly. Case studies can be parametrically defined depending on the resin viscosity parameters, carbon fiber permeabilities, infusion process parameters (resin pot and oven temperatures) and impregnation strategy (i.e. number, location, diameter and length of the inlet and outlet pipes, location of distribution media, sequential fillings, etc).
The simulation model was numerically verified and experimentally validated against experimental LRI tests, carried out in large stiffened wing panel demonstrators manufacturing. For that purpose, a complete test bench was manufactured and delivered to the topic manager premises in Italy, where infusion tests were conducted and filling times were accurately measured at critical locations along panels. Experimental characterization of permeability and viscosity parameters were key factors for achieving a good correlation between experimental and simulation filling times.
Figure 3 Stiffened wing panel made by LRI (Courtesy of ALENIA AERMACCHIand SICAMB)
by cidaut | May 19, 2015 | Materials
The XI Spanish National Congress on Composite Materials (http://matcomp15.org/) is jointly organized by the Rey Juan Carlos University, AEMAC (The Spanish Association of Composite Materials) and FIDAMC, and its main sponsor is AIRBUS Group. CIDAUT will participate presenting two different papers, one dedicated to development of material models for short fibre reinforced materials, and a second one focused on the implementation of design methodologies for continuous carbon fibre composites for automotive safety components.
The MATCOMP series of National Congresses have, ever since their founding in 1995, become the most important meeting between the academic, scientific and industrial communities within the composite materials field in Spain. The main objective has always been the establishment of a communication channel between the industry and the technical and scientific community to promote research, development, innovation, as well as the use and spreading of composite materials.
CIDAUT has taken part in these congresses in the past, and this year our contribution is focused on the design of automotive components. Nowadays it’s all about weight reduction, new environmental standards are calling for sustainability in mobility, which will be achieved with greener power trains and optimized light weight designs.
Short fibre reinforced components have considerably improved mechanical properties in terms of stiffness and structural strength thanks to the fibre contribution to their performance. Though used in the automotive industry for a long time, the influence of the manufacturing process is seldom taken into account because of the lack of an easy to implement design methodology, as current research goes through complex material models or expensive and very specific software packages.
BMW i3 Profile (Source: BMW Group Press Club)
If weight reduction is considered, then advanced composite materials, and especially those combining continuous fibre with plastic matrixes are very well poised for growth. In this context, several continuous carbon fibre components can be found in the automotive industry, from bonnets, front end structures, underbodies, side pillars or roofs, to the ambitious BMW i3 passenger cell. Our research deals with designing a suspension arm, which is probably one of the lesser found examples in the sector. A list of critical load cases has been selected from the suspension arm of a representative B segment vehicle. The packaging requirements have been taken from the same vehicle as well, imposing a limit on the available design volume. The challenge in this design lies mainly in taking into account manufacturing requirements such as the desirable symmetry of the staking, the correct combination of biaxial non crimp fabric plies with UD reinforcements, the limits on the possible orientations if the curvature radius grows imposed by the manufacturing process, together with the mechanical load cases and the available design space.
Meet us at MATCOMP the 6th-8th of July 2015 to know more about our research in the field of composite materials, or get in touch with us, we are always happy to share our experiences and find new collaboration opportunities.
by cidaut | May 19, 2015 | Sin categoría
It was organized by the Association for Organizational Learning SoL Spain (www.solspain.org). SoL Spain, is a community that share an interest in developing skills necessary for organizational learning to achieve fundamental changes in people and their organizations.
Persei Consulting, TECNALIA and CIDAUT share their business experiences in Lean Projects Management. Persei Consulting described their experience applying Scrum and agile methods in the management of software development projects, Tecnalia went into detail explaining the adaptation of these methodologies in their projects and pilot areas, and CIDAUT shared our experience deploying the Lean Project Management methodology.
Lean Project Management (LPM) is the application of Lean principles in the context of project management. LPM has many ideas in common with other lean concepts. The fundamental principle is based on creating more value with less “waste” using Lean tools such as standardization, visual control, daily Kaizen, etc.
The debate generated interesting conclusions for the companies got involved in a cultural change through the lean thinking and agile methods.
Start by enthusiasts
When an organization is facing a change, there are always three kinds of people: “Enthusiasts” (10%) who take easily the proposed changes, the “Silent majority” (80%) formed by neutral people who will adapt progressively to changes as they become consolidated and are extended, and finally “Reluctant to change” (10%) who tend to reject any proposal.
We agree that the best option is to start applying these methods in a pilot project with a good group of enthusiastic people involved. The following challenge is how to extend it to more people, more projects, and more departments. It is necessary to keep encouraging them and trust that enthusiasts will extend it to the rest.
Managers involvement, is it important?
Managers involvement is necessary to succeed in changing the management process?
We agree there are different degrees of involvement. The “laissez faire” management style to lead change as one priority. No one doubts that the rate of progress is higher when the Management is really involved.
But we agree that the degree of involvement or not is never an excuse for not promoting change initiatives from other non-hierarchical leadership when it takes sense to work according to this philosophy of work and applying agile methods.
Lean Tools
An advantage of the tools used in the application of agile methods is its simplicity.
Everybody learn how to use Lean tools without any problem. This can lead to the mistake of thinking that learning to use the tools, the change will occur by itself. This is not true but tools provide a way to initiate the change.
When we use the tools we need to adapt them to our type of work, to our reality, change tools conveniently and the real change occurs providing benefits when we change, when change the way we feel, the way we think and how we interact with our peers and customers.
Cultural change as main conclusion
As main conclusion we can say that the application of these methodologies is not an aim in itself, the ultimate goal is a change in the culture of our organization. Create a culture of collaboration and involvement of persons.
The change in the conditions a person does his job leads to a change of attitude in people. When people are involved they appreciate learning and action.
We agree that when an organisation improve working methods and workflow view, people change their attitude and that’s when the culture changes.
For more information about the content of this event visit the blog www.innpulsos.com
