MASTRO

Intelligent bulk MAterials for Smart TRanspOrt industries

Alke' is industrial partner of MASTRO project which brings together a European Network of 16 highly specialized partners from different fields. The main purposes of this project are:

Develop intelligent bulk materials for the aerospace, automotive and transport infrastructures sectors.
Increase consumer safety, component life-span and performance while reducing maintenance and manufacturing costs.

The functionality of the developed components will be demonstrated under relevant conditions at prototype level for the aerospace, automotive and transport networks. These developments will be supported by theoretical material models to capture the self-responsive functionalities. The outputs of the Project will consist of numerous applications in these sectors.
The matrices addressed consist of lightweight polymer composites like glass/carbon fibre reinforced polymers and thermoplastic materials (including melt-spinning for textiles used in the transport sector) together with asphalt and concrete formulations incorporating electrical carbon-based conductive nanomaterials. These self-responsive functionalities are based on two physical phenomena: piezoresistivity and Joule effect.
Alkè participates as industrial specialist and expert for the automotive sector and ICT linked topics.

The MASTRO objectives

Develop self-sensing bulk materials: to confer to the intelligent components the ability to monitor/store data about its own condition in terms of vibrations, defects, fatigue, creep and strain.
Develop self-deicing bulk materials: to avoid the ice layer formation or the loss of performance due to cold weather.
Develop self-curing bulk materials: to increase quality and durability while reducing manufacturing cost of the polymer composites and cement concrete formulations by improving the curing process step.
Develop self-healing bulk materials: to aid the repair of polymer composites and asphalt concrete formulations by healing those materials without the need of an external and expensive maintenance operation.
Develop self-protection bulk materials: to minimize the failure occurrence in case of electrostatic charge accumulation or lightning impacts by discharging the voltage through the smart component.

For more details on MASTRO project see: www.mastro-h2020.eu.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under grant agreement no 760940.
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