The understanding and the reliable prediction of material degradation, crack initiation and propagation is of vital importance in engineering. It allows the evaluation of product lifecycle and the criticality of exceptional loads. Also, it enables maintenance optimization in a wide range of industries (automotive, aircraft, nuclear…). Thanks to the ERC “XLS” grant, a new approach coined TLS (“Thick Level Set”) was developed to simulate crack propagation from sane material to critical rupture. The main advantage of this approach is that it takes into account both crack initiation and crack propagation without mesh size or mesh orientation dependency. This combination is not currently available in the industry. The TLS software sources (coined TTK for TLS Tool Kit) has been produced mostly during the ERC project. They were recently registered in the software protection agency. The POC goal is to transform the TTK software to industry usable software and to reach a win-win agreement with a well-established service company who will perform paid studies.

According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), earthquakes are responsible for more than half of the total human losses due to natural disasters from 1994 to 2003. There is no doubt that earthquakes are lethal and costly. CoQuake proposes an alternative, ground-breaking approach for avoiding catastrophic earthquakes by inducing them at a lower energetic level. Earthquakes are a natural phenomenon that we cannot avoid, but –for the first time– in CoQuake I will show that it is possible to control them, hence reducing the seismic risk, fatalities and economic cost. CoQuake goes beyond the state-of-the-art by proposing an innovative methodology for investigating the effect and the controllability of various stimulating techniques that can reactivate seismic faults. It involves large-scale, accurate simulations of fault systems based on constitutive laws derived from micromechanical, grain-by-grain simulations under Thermo-Hydro-Chemo-Mechanical couplings (THMC), which are not calibrated on the basis of ad-hoc empirical and inaccurate constitutive laws. A pioneer experimental research programme and the design and construction of a new apparatus of metric scale, will demonstrate CoQuake’s proof-of-principle and it will help to explore the transition from aseismic to seismic slip. CoQuake is an interdisciplinary project as it takes knowledge from various fields of engineering, computational mechanics, geomechanics, mathematics and geophysics. CoQuake opens a new field and new line of research in earthquake mechanics and engineering, with a direct impact on humanity and science.

This research project focuses on several key Direct Energy Deposition (DED) Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes that have great potential to be used as cost-effective and efficient repairing and re-manufacturing processes for aerospace components such as turbine blades and landing gears. This project aims to conduct fundamental research to understand the material integrity through chosen DED AM processes, the accuracy and limitations of these deposition processes, effective defect geometry mapping and generation methods, and automated and hybrid DED and post-deposition machining strategies. This project intends to connect repair and re-manufacturing strategies with design through accurate DED process simulation and novel multi-disciplinary design optimisation (MDO) methods to ultimately reduce the weakness of aerospace component at design stage and prolong their the lifecycles. Both powder-based and wire-based DED systems will be investigated to establish an across-the-board comparative study. The data collected through this comprehensive comparative study will be extremely valuable for the OEMs of this project (i.e. GKN, PWC, and HDI) to understand the pros and cons of these DED systems and will help them to select suitable repair and re-manufacturing strategies. The tests conducted in this research are also extremely beneficial for the SMEs in this project (i.e. Liburdi, AV&R, DPS) to validate their existing repairing systems and techniques.

An all composite tool for the manufacturing of winglet pairs will be designed and manufactured. The tool will be self heated. Separate cavities will be fed by a single injection system, ensuring identical quality and dimensional tolerances for both winglets.

Simulation-based engineering (SBE), in which traditional R&D, design and production technologies are complemented with computer simulations, has revolutionized the industrial sector. Computer simulations are critical for control of manufacturing processes, non-destructive-testing and decision-making at production phases, and shorten the lead-time of design and development processes, thus reducing both costs and time-to-market. The overarching objective of ProTechTion is to harness the full potential of multi-disciplinary SBE technology in industrial environments concerned with complex production processes. To this purpose, ProTechTion will form a multi-disciplinary research and education network that unites relevant disciplines and stakeholders to (i) develop new computational paradigms, (ii) train a generation of ESRs in state-of-the-art SBE technologies and cross-disciplinary skills, and (iii) bridge the knowledge transfer gap in multi-disciplinary SBE. The main objective of ProTechTion translates into the following research and training objectives: • To train and empower a generation of ESRs in developing, together with the industrial researchers, innovative solutions for pressing Industrial Problems (IPs). These solutions will be based on industry-driven tailor-made computational simulation tools. • To position European industry in the vanguard of SBE, and reinforce and consolidate Europe’s worldwide leadership. • To contribute with original research and innovations in SBE in order to solve multidisciplinary problems with interdisciplinary tools arising from the proposed IPs for fast decision making. • To cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit of the ESRs and integrate transverse research skills with demonstrators (codes).