European countries face great challenges because the demographic structure in the EU is changing rapidly, due to reducing birth rates and increasing life expectancies. In 2012, 17% of Europeans were aged 65 and older and in 2020 this will rise to 28%. Meanwhile, the mobility needs of the elderly are also changing. Maintaining a driver's licence is an important issue of independence today, both for males and females. Also technological developments like the introduction of e-bikes enables access to other means of transport. These demographic and behavioural changes are of growing concern to mobility and road safety. While accident data show a decreasing number of fatalities and serious injuries on EU roads, recent data from the ERSO show an increasing proportion of elderly in the fatality statistics. This trend is a serious threat to the achievements of recent decades and poses a challenge that must be addressed to meet goals set for further reduction of road fatalities. Furthermore, there is an increasing rate of obesity in EU populations, which introduces changes in injury patterns and risks. The SENIORS project focuses on the protection of elderly and obese road users also by transferring nowadays younger generations’ safety standards. The objective is to develop the required understanding of accident scenarios, injury mechanisms and risks and to implement these findings in test tools and test and assessment procedures. An integrated approach considering the elderly in multiple transport modes is applied to reduce the portion of elderly fatalities. The small-scale project focuses on providing tools to encourage wider adoption of advanced restraint and pedestrian protection systems improving the protection of older and obese vulnerable road users. The activities consolidate results from previous EU projects such as THORAX and AsPeCSS and meet the needs defined by the GRSP IWG on Frontal Impact working on a near-term (2015) and mid-term (2020) update of UN-R94.

In the need to improve the efficiency and driving range of electric vehicles (EVs), one strategy is the weight reduction of the global vehicle. There are already available solutions based on advanced light materials with promising structural properties but they still need further development to increase their TRL and reach the market. Furthermore, increasing environmental awareness and forthcoming stricter regulations demands the adoption of circular economy principles across the entire vehicle life-cycle. To respond to this challenge, ALMA will develop a novel BEV structure for a passenger car with 45% weight reduction potential compared to current baseline (15% additional reduction if compared to prior-art solutions) at affordable costs (below 3€/Kg-saved of additional cost), thus enabling up to 2.2 KWh/100Km efficiency increase and 11% LCA improvement. For this purpose, ALMA will develop a multi-material modular platform (BIW, chassis and closures) made of a combination of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHHS), Advanced-SMC and steel-hybrid materials, characterized with multiscale model-based tools. ALMA will adopt circular economy principles from early stages through the application of eco-design strategies to create a novel BEV platform “made to be recycled”, using a structural reversible bonding technology to enable the separation of components at the end-of-life (EoL) for repair and reuse. A ground-breaking health monitoring system based on acoustic emissions will be integrated in the structure to detect and locate damage while in-service. At last, efficient recycling and material recovery options will be analysed to complete the circular loop. ALMA involves a well balance group of 9 partners from 4 different EU countries, 5 of them are market-oriented companies (with 2 SMEs), being one an automotive OEM. It also includes 3 RTOs and one international association. ALMA has also gathered the support of 15 external supporting partners in the Advisory Board.

More and more industrial sectors are demanding high performance composite materials to face new challenges demanded by the transport sector. Carbon and glass fibre unidirectional continuous tape reinforced composites are one of the most promising options. It would be reasonable to expect that the manufacturing methods to obtain composite parts made of this hybrid material will be capable to tailor-made and optimize even more the advantageous properties given by the tapes nature. However, at the moment, these technologies are not mature enough for a full industrial implementation. Main existing barriers are related to the high consumption of resources, lower rates of automation, high production of defective and the subsequent growth of the manufacturing costs. FORTAPE aims to solve these drawbacks through the development of an efficient and optimized integrated system for the manufacturing of complex parts based on unidirectional fibre tapes for its application in the automotive and aeronautical industry, with the minimum use of materials and energy. To achieve this objective, three main routes for fibre impregnation will be researched to manufacture the unidirectional carbon and glass fibre tapes: novel heating up technologies, melted supercritical fluid-aided thermoplastic polymers and fluidized bed of powders. Novel combination of process-machine approaches will be applied in overmoulding and in-situ consolidation to manufacture the composite parts for the targeted sectors. Novel mathematical modelling and computational simulation concepts will be developed to support the structural optimization and the failure prevention and new instrumentation strategies for process control will be implemented for the selection of the best process. The FORTAPE consortium, led by CTAG, gathers 10 partners from 5 different European countries, and covers the whole value chain needed to develop new composite technologies with efficient use of materials and energy.

Primary particulate matter (PM) consists of chemical components suspended in the atmosphere as aerosols, e.g. as a result of exhaust gaseous and friction processes (e.g. braking). Such particles may potentially contribute to smog events in urban areas and might be responsible of negative effects on the environment (e.g. acid rain acidification, toxic effects on plants and animals) and health (e.g. cancer, respiratory issues). The challenge is therefore to develop a new generation of transport technologies able to reduce the contribution of traffic related and total particulate matter, and, at the same time, to comply with future and stricter legislations on vehicles emissions and EU air quality. The LOWBRASYS project aims at demonstrating a novel and low environmental impact brake system that will reduce micro and nanoparticles emissions by at least 50%. The measurement and understanding of micrometer-sized and ultrafine particles and their effects on health and the environment will be improved and whilst providing recommendations to policy makers. This goal will only be achievable by a systematic and structured approach focused by the LOWBRASYS Team on the following targets: 1. Novel materials formulations of the brakes pad and disc in order to reduce the total particle emissions and have a low-environmental impact. 2. Innovation of environmental friendly braking strategies (control systems) that reduce PM emissions. 3. Breakthrough technology for collection of particles near the PM source in order to further dramatically reduce PM emissions. 5. System integration of the novel pad, components and control systems in vehicles. 6. Improvement of the measurement techniques and understanding of the brake wear PM effects on health and the environment through state-of-the-art non-in-vivo techniques and related policy recommendations. Recommendations to policy makers will also be provided by the Team given no current applicable legislation in Europe.