01 Oct Project GEAR-UP. Green Engineering, Analysis, & Reskilling for Unbounded Production starts.
The GEAR-UP project, funded within the Horizon Europe program (HADEA) with Project ID – 101178484, is a comprehensive initiative to revolutionize the manufacturing sector through sustainable practices and advanced technologies.
GEAR-UP also emphasizes environmental conservation by using recycled materials in engineering design, significantly reducing virgin resources, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. The project intends to overcome challenges associated with secondary materials, such as performance variability, through resilient design and life-cycle environmental impact assessment. This approach represents a paradigm shift in engineering design, focusing on the circular value chain and developing universally adaptable AM technologies resilient to material variability.
Key Outcomes of GEAR-UP: → Replacing recycling with circular value cycle
✓ Effects of high trace elements in secondary alloys on material behavior during DED-LB/W & PBF-LB/M.
✓ Increase the use of recycled carbon and textile fibers in ME-FRP of composites using novel modeling methods.
✓ Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to forecast the environmental impact with product use, post-use, and circularity.
✓ Enhance sustainable product design using innovative simulation and modeling software.
✓ Implement the Digital Product Passport (DPP) initiative through interoperable digital platforms/tools.
✓ Foster human involvement in advancing circularity and sustainable technology adoption through training and
global collaborative networks.
COLFEED4Print will participate in the develop a highly complex and heterogeneous composite system based on recycled textiles with high (nano)cellulose content. Our team will characterize the processability of the masterbatches in terms of dynamic rheology at the temperatures. This data will set the extrusion procedures to fabricate the filament spools with the two standard diameters (1,75 and 2,85 mm). The morphology (microscopy), mechanical properties (tensile tests), and chemical interactions (spectroscopy,
dynamic mechanical, thermal analysis) combined with AI-based tools to tune the material performance for a specific application are expected to enable the use of recycled heterogeneous polymeric systems in the mainstream manufacturing sector.
The GEAR-UP project is funded by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA).
