The project's overall concept is centred on the scaling up of novel, mass-production nano-manufacturing techniques invented by FAST-SMART partners for synthesis of nano-structured smart materials and component manufacturing for energy harvesting applications to significantly improve the material quality and structural reliability (>50%~100% improvement) and reduce overall materials and processing costs (by 30%) through shortening the process chains and improving material processing efficiency, being focused on less and free rare-element dependence materials (such as lead-free piezoelectric and Hf-free half-Heusler thermoelectric materials) as well as on new energy harvester designs considering environmental strategy, thus to bring about positive, environment-related impacts to Europe (greenhouse gas emission down by 50%, waste reduction by 50%), increased EU’s market share worthy hundreds million Euros initially, and to promote wide implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) and Digital Single Market (DSM) in Europe, due to introduction of the new energy harvesting products, design and manufacturing services created through the FAST-SMART’s partnership. Current obstacles to the large-scale introduction of energy harvesters that use materials with less rare-element dependence and/or that are toxicity-free are associated largely with inadequate material performance and reliability, high manufacturing cost, and inadequately developed product design strategy addressing needs for sustainable developments. The main driver of the proposal lies in a need to meet challenges particularly for the development and applications of Piezoelectric (PE) and Thermoelectric (TE) materials, associated structures and systems for new-generation energy harvesters, and for dealing with energy generation, storage and uses related issues with a systematic approach, and hence, to help to meet EU’s targets on the social, economic and environmental developments.

GUDGET answers the CfP JTI-CS2-2018-CfP08-AIR-01-38 and aims at providing an innovative experimental set-up for the investigation of gust loads, to be installed in the transonic facility ONERA S3Ch. The proposal GUDGET will design, manufacture, calibrate, verify and finally install in the ONERA S3Ch WT an enhanced gust generator system and an aeroelastic half-model connected to the WT side wall, with the purpose to support the TM in the execution of a WT test campaign and gather information on the aeroelastic behaviour of the model under high amplitude gust conditions, with the acquisition of a relevant database which will allow to assess the numerical capabilities to predict gust loads. The WT test campaign is outside the scope of the GUDGET project. At this aim, the consortium GUDGET has to perform the design of the experimental setup: design and manufacture the WT model according to technical requirements provided by the TM. Special care will be dedicated to the dynamic characteristics of the final model and that a specific interface with the WT will be implemented. In parallel, the consortium will perform a preliminary trade-off analysis to find the best configuration of the GG to comply with requirements dictated in the topic, by considering innovative configurations of tilting airfoils moved by mechanical actuators as well as blowing slots fed by fluidic actuators or a combination of both. The best solution over a number of candidates will be chosen as the one to be designed in detail and then manufactured, calibrated/ verified and eventually installed in the WT. The GUDGET consortium has been setup by joining well recognized and very experienced companies and universities: IBK and POLIMI with a strong experience in the design, manufacturing and operating of WT models; DREAM for supporting CFD and numerical analysis; AVDES for the manufacturing activities and CTEC for the design and implementation of actuation devices.

The advances in the Information and Communication Technologies are revolutionizing our everyday life. However, the manufacturing industry does not yet take complete advantage of this huge potential. Using the latest ICT developments, MC-SUITE project wants to boost the productivity of manufacturing industry. On the one hand, machining process modelling empowered by High Performance Computing technologies allows simulating precisely the cutting process including force and surface quality. On the other hand, monitoring of the machine empowered by Big Data and Cloud technologies allows analysing the real process including vibration and process instability issues. Bridging the gap between virtual and real worlds, correlations of the simulated and monitored cutting process will allow optimizing both simulation and machining performances. In agreement with the work programme, the combination of manufacturing technologies and ICT is at the core of the construction of this consortium. The project will complement science with innovation to propose new software frameworks which can collect information from multi-monitoring devices as turnkey technologies to improve the machining process. MC-SUITE will produce multiple impacts in the European industry, reflecting the trans-disciplinary nature of the project. The participation of industrial partners, both SMEs and large companies from ICT and industrial sectors, will ensure that the project will directly impact on wide range of industries such as metal part manufacturing, Computer-Aided Manufacturing software, machine tool industry. MC-SUITE project has the opportunity to produce a new breakthrough in the productivity of the European manufacturing industry.

PULSE-COM aims to explore technological breakthroughs developing and integrating a new class of Photo-Piezo-Actuators to open a radical new future technology. Our vision is based on the use of low cost photo-mobile polymer (PMP) films and a lead-free piezo-composite (PZL) to target their use in innovative new fields never before considered. Starting from phenomenological and modelling aspects of the composite materials, we will fabricate and experimentally characterize Photo-Piezo-Actuators (PMP-PZL) proof of concept devices. The project will address through an ambitious interdisciplinary research to the employment of proper materials and the appropriate optical strategies to increase and tune the absorption of the light and finally to increase the PMP devices efficiency. With the same target electromechanical models and innovative growth processes will guide the optimization of the piezocomposite to improve its performance, and thus its sensitivity when coupled with the PMP. The PMP-PZL device will be integrated into more complex opto-electronic systems through high-risk incremental research to achieve pioneering industrial implementation. Specifically, we target the realization of cutting-edge applications based on photo-activated Meso-scale machines as opto-switches and opto-microvalves, Reconfigurable Optics and Photoenergy Harvesting Systems. Our study can open a new window on the future development of light-driven nanomotors and their potential applications in different areas such as biomedical, environmental and nanoengineering fields.