Flexcrash aims to develop a flexible and hybrid manufacturing technology based on applying surface patterns by additive manufacturing onto preformed parts. Aluminium alloys have been selected as the optimum material to build high performance structures, addressing both lightweight and environmental sustainability. They provide better recyclability, affordability (low CRM content), and costs than other material alternatives that would need complex developments for joining, recycling, and manufacturing. The property tailoring capacity offered by hybrid manufacturing will permit to develop a new type of crash-tolerant structures with outstanding performance under a wide range of impact angles and unexpected crash conditions. Structures will be defined according to the collision parameters identified by the different mixed traffic scenarios. Such tailored structures are the ideal solutions for dynamic active safety devices that allows displacement of crash structures to optimally face an imminent crash. Considering that the frontal crash is the most common (70%), a front-end structure has been chosen as demonstrator to validate the manufacturing developments, the modelling approach and the testing methodologies. The flexibility of the proposed technology will facilitate its transferability to other safety-related structures in vehicle’s locations with higher risk for passenger’s injuries while decreasing the number of materials and processes used to manufacture a crash structure. Simplify supply chain will turn into 20% manufacturing costs saving and reduce the risk of disruption. Virtual testing with improved reliability, validated by crash tests, will be used to propose new testing configurations, looking at the next step towards standardization. The application of Flexcrash solutions to the whole BiW offers a lightweighting potential up to 20% with improved safety (toward 50% reduction of passenger’s injuries and fatalities).

RECOTRANS project will create new manufacturing system for obtaining multi-material metal composites products suitable for the transport industry; automotive, truck and railway sector. The aim of this project is to integrate unconventional manufacturing technologies such as (microwave) MW radiation and laser joining in current RTM and pultrusion production lines. This integration will contribute to obtain high quality lightweight multi-materials at high production rates; reducing production cost, energy consumption and time to market contributing to reduce CO2 emissions coming from vehicles; truck, automotive and railway

OPeraTIC will develop a highly efficient and modular manufacturing platform to boost the adoption of high-power Ultra-Short Pulsed Lasers, as a sustainable alternative to current surface processing. The OPeraTIC open, interoperable and expandable architecture will tackle the industrial entrance barriers of laser microstructuring of large 3D parts. OPeraTIC provides the required productivity/quality through different developments: (i) combination of advanced optical modules for beam transport and manipulation (ii) dexterous and precision robotic manipulator. iii) AI-enhanced process planning and adaptability. OPeraTIC proposes a modular and automated routing of optical components guaranteeing versatility and replicability, i.e beam delivery (polarization maintaining fiber), management (dynamic control beam shaping) and metrology (novel optical setups for product & process monitoring). On top of that, OPeraTIC will develop a system architecture for the upscaling of USPL machines to large envelope and complex trajectories, driven by a novel RAMI4.0-compliant controller (merging dexterous manipulation with high level CNC motion accuracy and full synchronization of motion, laser process and quality control). Finally, OPeraTIC proposes an I4.0-compliant platform for systematic data exchange and integrated bidirectional communication (Automation-ML and OPC-UA standards) between real environment and its digital representation. This end-to-end seamless connection enhances a Machine Intelligence Framework for the definition of Zero Defect Manufacturing strategies, empowered by AI and real-time monitorization and control, for process optimisation. A consortium of 4 top Research Institutions and 7 laser sector industry partners, backed by 2 adoption-oriented partners, will demonstrate OPeraTIC potential on relevant and high impact large-scale use-cases by 4 industrial end-users in the automotive, aeronautic, lighting, and white goods sectors.