SafetyCube Plenary Meeting, Barcelona – March 2016

On March 1-3, 2016, CIDAUT attended to Barcelona Plenary Meeting in order to discuss the progress and next steps of the SafetyCube project.

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Within SafetyCube’s methodology workpackage, guidelines for literature search and for summarizing research results – including meta-analysis – have been developed, which together with the revised template for coding research studies, ensures a uniform way of addressing different risks and measures in different areas of interest. That way it will be possible to perform overall quantitative analyses over studies that are otherwise hardly comparable. First results are planned to become available late autumn 2016.

Moreover, vehicle, infrastructure and behaviour workpackages discussed the specific issues and particularities involved in each field.

A major part of the discussions was dedicated on the design and the functionalities of the SafetyCube Decision Support System (DSS), on the basis of the feedback from stakeholders received so far during the various SafetyCube workshops, as well as on the so far experiences from the analyses carried out within SafetyCube.

SafetyCube is a 3-year Horizon 2020-project centred on state of the art evaluations of accident risk factors and safety measures based on accident data analysis and on in-depth understanding of causes of road accidents. It aims at developing a Decision Support System and guide road safety stakeholders to identify the most cost-effective measures that will address the most pressing road safety problems on the European level. Analytic methods will be developed, and key road safety themes will be used to develop and demonstrate the project’s integrated approach. The project is led by Loughborough University, UK.

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MetalMorphosis Project finishes its activity with a successful Final Seminar.

More than 50 experts attended the final event.

The main results and conclusions obtained during MetalMorphosis were presented in Ghent on the 24th of February 2016. The event was hold in the Belgian Welding Institute facilities and more than 50 experts from different technology fields attended the event.

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Every partner in the consortium presented the work done, the knowledge acquired and the next challenges to be faced. The main conclusion of the event was that MetalMorphosis project has been an important step forward in the consolidation of the hybrid joints metal-composite in the automotive sector.

Centimfe as project coordinator presented the main milestones covered by the project and the general targets achieved. Ideko and Cidaut focused their presentation on material selection, process optimization and product design. The joining technology was mainly described by Belgian Welding Institute and Poynting, while the life cycle assessment was explained by Stam.

Finally, each of the end users involved in the project presented their demonstrator. In the case of Tenneco, the bottom closing of a monotube shock absorber was used as a case study. The welded steel loop was therefore replaced by a composite part in PA66 with glass fibres produced by injection moulding. This solution has the advantage of producing lighter shock absorbers (15 % saving) while keeping the requirements for a structural part. The technology can be integrated easily in the manufacturing process, keeping the product at an acceptable cost for the market.

Tool Presse presented his hybrid solution (metal-composite) for a pedal brake with a 17% weight saving and important reduction on cost and production process time. The prototype presented was previously validated attending to the requirements defined during the project.

Regeneracija showed his frontal bumper manufactured in aluminium and CFRP. The manufacturing process has combined RTM with electromagnetic joining in order to obtain a 50% lighter component fulfilling all the requirements of this kind of component.

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For more information please visit www.metalmorphosis.eu

Meet CIDAUT at the EU Brokerage Event on KET in Horizon 2020

The German and French National Contact Point (NCP) and Enterprise Europe Network Alsace with the Europe Alsace Network organise a brokerage event with he objectives to present the European Union’s new NMBP Work Programme 2016 – 2017 of the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation “Horizon 2020” and to prepare future co-operations between participants. We will be sharing our proposal ideas in several of the NMBP, FoF and SPIRE topics in order to lead and collaborate in new proposals, meet us there and let’s build projects together!

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The brokerage events are a perfect opportunity to present our own project concepts and to meet representatives from companies/SMEs, universities and research organisations in order to exchange ideas during pre-arranged meetings with the aim of paving the way for future co-operations and European projects including call topics for 2016 and 2017.

Taking place in Mainz, Germany, the 12th of May the agenda of the event (all the information is available at https://www.b2match.eu/kets2017) covers plenary sessions and general information from the European Commission, 5 parallel workshops of the EEB and KET for Energy, NMBP for Healthcare and Biotechnology and Risk Assessment in Nanotechnology, Factories of the Future (Production), SPIRE and Pilot Lines (Chemical Technologies) and NMBP for advanced materials, and finally a session of B2B meetings.

It is during this session where we will be happy to share and comment on proposal ideas and new collaboration opportunities. Some of our most topics of interest include EE-01-2017, EE-04-2016-2017, EE-12-2017, EE-17-2016-2017, NMBP-04-2017, NMBP-05-2017, MBP-06-2017, NMBP-35-2017, SPIRE-08-2017, FOF-09-2017.

We will keep updating our profile in the upcoming weeks and until the event takes place, so do not hesitate to look for CIDAUT or contact us directly at newsletter@cidaut.es if you want to know more, includinding our interests in other work programmes (Mobility for Growth, Green Vehicle, Low Carbon Economy…)

The first REMAGHIC General Meeting takes place at CIDAUT facilities (Spain) on 24-25 February 2016

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All partners of the REMAGHIC project (except Piaggio and Pininfarina, and the latter joined by webmeeting) gathered in Valladolid (Spain) to review the work done during the first six months of the project. During this period the main work has been focused on WP 1 and WP2, which are related with the recovery of REE and magnesium from industrial waste input. WP5 LCCA models development has already been kicked off during this time and Dissemination & Communication activities (WP6) and Management (WP7) will take place along all the project progress.

During the meeting a general revision of the status of the project was done. Each WP leader presented the work that had been developed, and any question or doubt was solved at the moment.

REMAGHIC meeting hold 24-25 February 2016 CIDAUT facilities.

As a complement to the project during this meeting, two workshops took place. The first one was planned to give the entire consortium a first approach of the work which is expected to be done by each partner in the WP5 (Life Cycle assessment of the process). This first workshop focused mainly on explaining why good quality information is really important for the success of the project. The second workshop was about the Risk Management of the project. This workshop had two parts, a theoretical one, and a practical session, in which all the partners worked actively to identify and classify all the risks related to WP1, WP3 and WP5.

During this meeting the consortium was able to visit CIDAUT facilities: on the first day meeting, the facilities related with the project (magnesium casting facilities, microstructure characterization laboratory and mechanical properties laboratory) were shown and on the second day a brief tour to show all the capabilities of the center was organized.

The REMAGHIC project was invited to the SPIRE Impact Workshop 2016

The European Commission has officially invited REMAGHIC to be present during the 2nd  SPIRE Impact Workshop, on 21-22 April 2016 in Brussels. REMAGHIC will be one of the 16 projects that will be presented at the Session3: Efficient Sustainability and Circular Economy – Domain1: Recovery from Waste). If you want to know more about our research, contact us or meet us there and let’s discuss ideas together.

CIDAUT will be at the World Manufacturing Forum in May

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Source http://www.worldmanufacturingforum.org/

The World Manufacturing Forum (which is an event funded by the European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020) will take place in Barcelona on 3-4 May. This year’s edition is titled From Global Challenges to Grand Manufacturing Opportunities: Leading towards Growth and Sustainability. At CIDAUT we believe this is a great chance to speak about projects, ideas and challenges to come with partners and customers, enlarging out networks and enriching the experience with fruitful conversations and a very interesting program.

The vision stated at the WMF is the following: the importance of manufacturing as a key contributor to economic wealth and growth has been recognized and elevated again as a priority in industrialized nations in the early 21st century. Innovation fueled by ever increasing customer demand drives research efforts toward increased productivity through the development and use of new technologies, whilst respecting the need for a more sustainable use of resources across the globe.

In their aspiration to generate new revenue manufacturing enterprises expand beyond traditional boundaries. Globalization has been the biggest driver of growth for many of them over the past decades, but today, it looks as this may not be sufficient anymore, as sustainable competitive advantage requires solid innovation and effective resource-use strategies.

In this context, the World Manufacturing Forum will bring together policy experts, industry leaders of large multinationals and small to medium-sized enterprises, as well as academic leaders across the globe to discuss the economic, social and technical challenges that will impact global manufacturing in the future.

The Forum will address technological and financial challenges affecting industrialized and emerging economies alike as well as the policies supporting and defining new manufacturing megatrends and challenges to SMEs in global markets. Also, trends such as manufacturing intelligence, social innovation, the Circular Economy, zero-waste concepts and disruptive technologies as drivers for products and services in the future.

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Source http://www.worldmanufacturingforum.org/

Cidaut will be a member of the Scientific Reviewing Committee of the First World Light Electric Vehicle Summit (LEVS)

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Light electric vehicles are becoming a key actor in the urban sustainable mobility, but nowadays there is not a meeting point to highlight all the research activities related to this kind of vehicles. Attending to this need LEVS, the World Light Electric Vehicle Summit, is born.

The first edition will be held in Barcelona, 20th and 21st September 2016.

The initiative has four main objectives:

  • Learn from each other’s experience.
  • Present the actual status of work and achievements.
  • Find partners to develop synergies and build new projects.
  • Join forces to lobby relevant authorities to get support.

LEVS aims at providing a premier and high quality global platform to foster exchange of views between research and development actors, industry, authorities, end-users and Non- Governmental Organizations in the field.

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Strategies for light electric vehicles development will also be discussed and defined for further actions. Seeing the huge congestion problems our cities are facing nowadays, it is no doubt that light electric vehicles have a key role to play in the future.

Cidaut is strongly involved in the reduction of the environmental impact due to mobility and it is actively working in the development of electrical solutions for light vehicles. Cidaut has developed his own electric tricycles, a small demonstrator for urban mobility and is involved, nowadays, in the 7th Frame Programme Projects: Free-Moby, Plus-Moby, Evolution, Alive and Urban-EV. Its activities are also oriented to establish crash-test standards and regulations suitable for the particularities of the light vehicles

For this high implication in the Light Electric Vehicle development CIDAUT has been invited to be a member of the LEVS Scientific Reviewing Committee, we expect to meet you there. Find more information at http://www.levs.mobi/ or get in touch with us directly at newsletter@cidaut.es.

CIDAUT attended the EU-Brazil Workshop on Advanced Biofuels

The European Commission (EC), The Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI), the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and the Brazilian National Council of State Funding Agencies (CONFAP) organized the EU-Brazil Workshop: Coordinated Call on Advanced Biofuels the past 9th of March where we had the opportunity to assist, and promote our project idea for the call H2020-LCE-22-2016.

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This Workshop aimed to offer to Brazilian and European researchers an opportunity for networking, discussion and preparing joint activities under the call H2020-LCE-22-2016: International Cooperation with Brazil on advanced lignocellulosic biofuels. CIDAUT, as an expert in energy and biofuels, is interested in one of the three subchallenges within the call related with “gasification of bagasse to syngas and advanced liquid fuel production, including biofuels for aviation”. This item was developed in a previous call (H2020-LCE-08-2016) where CIDAUT submitted the project DELIA as coordinator and responsible of the Fischer-Tropsch unit design, construction and commissioning. Due to the synergies between both calls, it was an excellent opportunity to show the DELIA idea and to establish contact with stakeholders both in European and Brazilian industries and Research Centers.

One of our main objectives in the workshop was to show CIDAUT capabilities in pilot plant designing, construction and commissioning which involve catalytic reactors. Our expertise in pilot units for syngas upgrading and conditioning for biofuels production is remarkable, and includes our knowledge on auxiliary units in order to integrate the whole concept. We had the chance to meet the main European and Brazilian actors interested in the call H2020-LCE-22-2016 and share our capabilities and expertise with them. CIDAUT is open to collaborate with any of the consortiums that were taking shape during the workshop. It was a very interesting and fruitful experience!!

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Hipeba Project

HIPEBA (“High Performance Steel for Safer and more Competitive Safety Barriers”) is a EU-funded project that focuses on the development of safer and more competitive road restraint systems by using high-performance steels. HIPEBA is funded under the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) framework programme. The Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) provides funding for high-quality research projects that support the competitiveness of the European Coal and Steel industries.

Objectives

  • Map current and future performance-related requirements for safety barriers.
  • Determine how steels with enhanced material characteristics can contribute to improve the performance of safety barriers in all stages of their life cycle.
  • Deliver criteria for the technical implementation of high-performance steels into road safety barriers.
  • Demonstrate that introducing high-performance steels in safety barriers can make products more competitive and yield economic revenues for EU’s industry and society, compensating the initial purchase cost.
  • Develop and test pilot designs that demonstrate the benefits of high-performance steels.
  • Ensure that road safety barriers manufactured with high-performance steel meet the required certification and approval processes.

Why?

The European Union, a world leader in the steel industry, is facing increasingly fierce competition from non-EU producers. Advanced research is essential for European industry to remain competitive, as well as a deeper understanding of the paramount importance of high-performance steel within the everyday needs of the road safety sector.

With the purpose of supporting this leadership, HIPEBA is a ground-breaking initiative relevant to the maintenance and new construction of EU road infrastructures, as the latest and safest technology must become available to European road users.

Who?

The HIPEBA consortium has gathered a group of specialist organisations from industry, academia and research securing a successful implementation and deployment of its planned activities.

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News & Recent Events

The third HIPEBA consortium meeting takes place in CIDAUT facilities (Spain) on 13 October 2015

All partners of the HIPEBA project gathered in Valladolid (Spain) to review the work done during the last year -mostly under Work Package 1- and to discuss the work plan for the next months. In particular, the consortium agreed on the next steps to successfully complete the tasks under Work Package 2 (“Material Properties and processes analysis“) by the end of the year. In addition, a tele-conference was set up for 28 October in order to schedule the imminent characterization of steels tests. The results of these tests will provide a wide knowledge about the high performance steels which would be used in the barrier systems.

hipeba_2HIPEBA meeting hold 13 October 2015 Cidaut facilities.

The HIPEBA project was invited to the TRA2016 poster session

The European Commission has officially invited HIPEBA (“High Performance Steel for Safer and more Competitive Safety Barriers”) to be present during the 6th Transport Research Arena (TRA2016) poster session. The Smart Transportation Alliance (STA), leader of the project’s communication and dissemination efforts, will be present at the TRA2016, the most important transport research event in Europe, which will take place in Warsaw (Poland), from 18 to 21 April 2016.

SafetyCube Plenary Meeting, Gothenburg – November 2015

CIDAUT together with other vehicle, infrastructure and behavioural experts attended last SafetyCube Meeting on November 10th 2015, gathered in Gothenburg to receive an in-depth training for coding road safety literature. The coding exercise is the basis for an evidence-based, quantified overview of risk factors in road traffic as well as the effectiveness of countermeasures. This will be one of the main building blocks of the Decision Support System, SafetyCube’s main outcome.

The training, supported by extensive written guidelines, focused on the many research designs that are used in road safety studies, their potential biases and, hence, the conclusions that can be drawn or cannot be drawn from a study. Within SafetyCube’s methodology workpackage an interactive excel-based coding template had been developed which ensures a uniform way of coding different studies in different areas of interest. That way it will be possible to perform overall quantitative analyses over studies that are otherwise hardly comparable. First results are planned to become available late autumn 2016.

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SafetyCube (Safety CaUsation, Benefits and Efficiency) is a research project funded by the European Commission under the Horizons 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, in the domain of Road Safety. The project started on May 1st, 2015 and will run for a period of three years.

The primary objective of the SafetyCube project is to develop an innovative road safety Decision Support System (DSS) that will enable policy-makers and stakeholders to select and implement the most appropriate strategies, measures and cost-effective approaches to reduce casualties of all road user types and all severities in Europe and worldwide.

Metalmorphosis’ final seminar

The 30 months Metalmorphosis Project is really close to its end. In order to show and demonstrate the results achieved a final seminar is going to be held in the headquarters of the Belgian Welding Institute in Gant on the 24th of February 2016.

The admission to this event is free subjected to registration: http://goo.gl/forms/H0qr2ud0zY

The project has been focused on the development and optimization of hybrid joints between metal and composite hybrid parts in order to obtain enhanced automotive components with integrated functions. The joints are obtained thanks to the application of electromagnetic forces. This technology allows joining composite materials that are not weldable, eliminates the heat affected zone, is a clean process and reduces the cost of the joints. In the first half of the project, important innovations have been introduced in tubular and flat joints working with laboratory specimens, while in the second half, the knowledge generated has been applied to the development of automotive components.

The consortium is formed by nine partners. BWI, Centimfe (leader), Cidaut and Cidaut have focused their effort in the research and development activities. STAM is the responsible of the LCA analysis. Poynting is an SME specialized in the development of electromagnetic joining devices. Regeneracija, Tenneco and Toolpresse are the industrial partners of the project; each of them has developed, with the support of the consortium, a demonstrator to apply the knowledge and demonstrate the advantages of the electromagnetic joining.

Regeneracija has designed a bumper, where the crash box is designed in CFRP, and the cross beam is a sandwich of CFRP and aluminum. All the parts have been assembled attending to the technology developed for flat joints.

Tenneco has improved the design of its shock absorber reducing the number of components and simplifying the assembly process thanks to the integration of functions through electromagnetic tubular joints.

Toolpresse has created a new concept of hybrid pedal brake where both ends are manufactured by plastic injection to fulfill the geometric requirements and the central part is extruded in aluminum obtaining a stiff light component.

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