CIDAUT, together with the partners of Salient Project, is tackling the new challenges of the forthcoming connected and automated vehicles’ crashworthiness. The new skills of the connected and automated vehicles will allow to significantly reduce the number of accidents and fatalities in our roads, but the zero crashes scenario is still far away. In the meanwhile, the communication among vehicles, V2V technology, will be a useful tool to have some pieces of important information some milliseconds in advance of the crash event.
This information will allow the absorption elements of the vehicle to give an active response to the impact they are about to suffer. But to obtain this active response, a deep research and development work is needed in order to select the right material and the optimum geometry for each of the components that shape the structure of the vehicle.
At the same time, the project aims to find a sustainable solution, and attending to this is looking for recyclable light materials, as composite, aluminum or the combination of both, taking into account the whole life cycle analysis of the components and looking for circular economy compliant solutions. In order to select the most suitable material a detailed characterization campaign of different grades of composite and aluminum is being performed to know their static, dynamic, cyclic, fatigue, thermal and impact properties, which will conduct to obtaining accurate material cards to be implemented in advances software tools that will allow to optimize the geometry of the different components involved in the passive safety behavior of the automated vehicles and also to use the right material in the right position.
The research leading to this results has received funding from Horizon Europe under Grant Agreement nº 101069600
The ESTELLA consortium held its First General Assembly on the 7th and 8th of February in León (Spain). The aim of this meeting was to review the current status of all the tasks carried out during the project and to present the next steps.
The main objective of the ESTELLA project is to increase the sustainability of thermosetting epoxy composites by acting on the whole value chain of the materials, starting from the design stage through the introduction of CAN bonds in both fossil- and bio-based matrices and fibres. Ultimately this will enable their recycling, while redefining all manufacturing and recycling processes involved, ensuring the maximal recovery rate of its components, and strengthening the environmental and economical dimensions of thermosetting composites value chain.
In this first phase of the project, two main tasks are being carried out: the development of raw materials and the investigation of microorganisms capable of degrading the developed composite. On the one hand, raw material developers are engaged in polymer design and functionalisation and fibres in order to be able to start manufacturing the tailor-made biocomposites in the coming year. On the other hand, microorganism researchers are evaluating the different species that appear in cultures made from commercial epoxy resins.
Last July 5th, the ESTELLA consortium met in Brussels to kick-off the project. All partners presented their role and they discussed the details of the implementation of the work plan for the following 42 months of research.
The ESTELLA is an ambitious initiative that proposes an innovative solution to improve the recyclability of poorly recyclable materials, specifically thermoset composites. This will involve the design of novel thermosetting biocomposites (epoxy and natural fibres) with inherent recyclability. This will be achieved thanks to the introduction of the Covalent Adaptive Network (CAN) that will allow the resin (reprocessed or repolymerised into new products) and fibres to be recycled. The recyclability of the composites developed will be evaluated by means of current mechanical, chemical and biological processes adapted to these new materials. And they will be validated through the manufacture of prototypes for the construction and leisure/mobility sectors.
The ESTELLA consortium has 13 partners from 9 European countries as well as Slovenia, Poland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Spain, Denmark, Germany and Norway. Soon our project website will be up and running!
OSIRIS is an ambitious national project whose main objective is to promote a strategic cooperation in recycling and recovery technologies to improve the circular economy of composites and complex plastic materials with high added value, a work that began last January.
This three-year project in which four Technology Centers participate: AIMPLAS (Technological Institute of Plastics), AITEX (Textile Research Institute), CIDAUT (Foundation for Transport and Energy Research and Development) and GAIKER (GAIKER Foundation), is financed by the CDTI (Centre for Industrial Technological Development), through the Ministry of Science and Innovation, in the context of the grant of aid for Technological Centers of Excellence “Cervera” (CER-20211009).
The consortium is working together, sharing experiences, solutions and good practices that contribute to improving recycling technologies for composite and complex plastic materials. Technologies in which the members of the consortium have been working in recent years and their corresponding results have allowed them to be recognized as “CERVERA Centers of Excellence”. The OSIRIS NETWORK, formed by these excellent Technological Centers, has the objective of positioning itself as a reference network both nationally and internationally, leading to the growth of the R+D+i projects and technology transfer to the business and industrial fabric.
To achieve this objective, the network is centred on three strategic technological approaches: technology for waste recycling, recovery of intermediate products and post-processing of intermediate products into final products. On the advances of these scientific bases, led by more than 84 researchers and technicians from the whole network, the strategy of national and international dissemination, the training and the attracting talents, the attracting companies and the planning of new R+D+i projects is supported. All of the above aims to contribute with a global and strengthened vision to the challenges of the present and the future with respect to the recycling of complex raw materials.
All the advances of the OSIRIS NETWORK can be soon followed in the website: www.redosiris.com
Unfortunately, the strike of coronavirus pandemic in Europe made impossible to celebrate a face-to-face meeting. Instead, a virtual General Assembly meeting was carried out on 21st and 22nd September.
Partners discussed the current activities and progress of the project. The meeting had as main aims to monitor and share the results of the tasks carried out in the previous 8,5 months.
Bionanopolys unites European experts in this field to transform these bio-based materials to nano-scale and, moreover, develop an Open Innovation Test Bed (OITB) environment. The aim is to manufacture innovative bionanocomposites from sustainably sourced feedstocks in Europe as well as bio-based nano-products for packaging, textile, agriculture, cosmetics, pharma or food.
For this purpose, Bionanopolys will use high lignocellulosic feedstocks for the production of cellulose nanofibers, cellulose nanocrystals, nanolignin and metallic nanoparticles on the one hand. On the other hand, high sugar content feedstocks will serve for the production of building blocks, organic acids, PHA and active compounds to create nanocapsules.
To speed up the introduction of biobased nano-enabled materials into the market by providing a Single Entry Point (SEP) for stakeholders, Bionanopolys aims at creating a network of 14 pilot plants and their complementary services. In this context, five pilot plants will focus on the development of bionanomaterials from biomass, three pilot plants are dedicated to bionanocomposites and six plants aim at manufacturing bio-based nanoproducts in order to reach a wide range of applications in different sectors. Pilot lines are going to be upgraded and fine-tuned across the entire Bionanopolys value chain.
Thereby, for the first time, Bionanopolys will create an integrated platform of technologies and scientific expertise devoted to the nanotechnology based on bio-based raw materials. This is complemented by a comprehensive portfolio of services for the development and integration of new bio-based nano-enabled products.
