The impact of the project can be summarised in the following:
- Accelerated market uptake of the developed smart materials and the intelligent structures and new market opportunities for European industries in some of the most challenging and demanding fields such as renewable energy systems, aerospace, transport, consumer goods and ICT, with potential to be extended to other technological areas.
- Improvement in existing manufacturing processes through integration of smart materials. Self-sensing and self-healing properties of smart materials enabled the prediction of possible structural defects. In addition, the establishment of extended non-destructive testing, developed new methodologies to ensure reliable products.
- Improvement in technical knowledge on the integrated manufacturing processes for nanomaterials and smart materials in terms of productivity, environmental performance and cost-effectiveness. Introduction of composites in an affordable way in smart architectures: material cost reduction, process design and automation. Development of self-sensing and self-healing properties to access markets like in automotive industry, where the use of composite materials is limited, due to the difficulty to detect damages and to repair them.
- Promotion of safe-by-design approaches in collaboration with EU Clusters and contribution towards the framework of EU nano-safety and regulatory strategies.
- Improved understanding of materials properties based on theoretical materials models. The proposed modelling techniques provided an in depth understanding of the material properties from atomistic to continuum scale and will export the SMARTFAN technology to other applications.
- Enhancement of knowledge base in the EU, not only at the R&D level but also at the manufacturing and production level, by creating a highly skilled workforce with improved levels of job satisfaction.
- Contribution to a future circular economy; The environmental impact and the cost benefits were evaluated at each step of the project in order to result in a new, low-cost and green technology.
- A basis for recycled materials was set, suggesting a full recycling cycle of thermoplastic composites coming from production scraps up to the end-of-life.
