Perspectief grant for fusion bonding of thermoplastic composites

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded over €6 million within the Perspectief Programme for ENLIGHTEN – Enabling Integrated Lightweight Structures. The research aims at ‘Reducing CO2 emissions by making vehicles lighter’. While manufacturing technologies for components from thermoplastics composites are rapidly advancing, the integration and joining of these parts is less developed. The idea is to overcome this barrier with an integrated approach to fusion bonding, combining process and performance optimization by simulations of physical phenomena and process monitoring using artificial intelligence. The consortium is led by Remko Akkerman from U/Twente, TU Delft is one of the partners in the consortium. Clemens Dransfeld, Saullo Castro and Boyang Chen (faculty of Aerospace Engineering) and Bert Sluys and Frans van der Meer (faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences) are part of the TU Delft team for ENLIGHTEN.