Periodic Reporting for period 3 - i-TRIBOMAT (Intelligent Open Test Bed for Materials Tribological Characterisation Services)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-01-01 bis 2023-03-31
Introduction of the new innovative material solutions into tribological applications will substantially reduce friction and protect materials from wear, directly influencing environmental effects and CO2 emission. Globally, total energy consumption could be lowered as well as CO2 emission reduced, by using new technologies. Energy efficiency is related not only to energy saving and reduced emissions, but can drive a number of “multiple benefits”, such as macroeconomic development, public budget increase, enhanced health and wellbeing, industrial productivity and energy delivery improvements. i-TRIBOMAT is accelerating the uptake of new and increasingly sustainable tribological solutions such as environmentally acceptable lubricants, bio-no-tox additives, renewable lubes, etc.
i-TRIBOMAT will provide the world’s first Open Innovation Test Bed dedicated to validating and up-scaling new materials. Intelligent tribological materials characterisation will be brought to market, fostering industrial innovation in the European manufacturing industry. The ultimate goal of i-TRIBOMAT is to reduce costs and time-to-market, when up-scaling materials.
This is being realized through several objectives that we have set as a priority:
-Establish the shared infrastructure for tribological materials characterisation and develop protocols providing new mechanistic information on materials tribological performance to support industrial materials up-scaling
-Bridge the gap between laboratory-scale tribological tests and field operation performance by specific up-scaling tools for faster deliver of new industrial material solutions
-Data sharing and harmonisation, and explore data analytics to foster materials up-scaling
-Validate i-TRIBOMAT services for highly relevant European industrial sectors – transport, energy and manufacturing
-Establish a sustainable European Single Entry Point (SEP) that acts as the collaboration, communication and user interface reducing time-to-market of materials
-Promote i-TRIBOMAT tribological services through Translators Network and collaborate with the European ecosystem
We have defined a first two versions of service catalogue for the i-TRIBOMAT Test Bed, defining services for customers to be provided by i-TRIBOMAT. Accordingly, the i-TRIBOMAT service catalogue for potential customer and optimum services required.
We have compiled the infrastructure for tribological material characterisation and tribo-analytics - different equipment types, including 56 relevant tribometers. The compiled information was used to provide an initial characterization of the equipment involved in tribological tests, which was included with the collected equipment data. It defined the initial status of the shared infrastructure and provided an initial characterization of the different lab equipment and their capabilities and limitations.
i-TRIBOMAT database and high level architecture was designed and first release of the database platform was established. First simulation models for use case of engines, gear bearing and seals wee developed and calibrated to simulation efficiency and life-time of components.
External Advisory Board was set up and outreach to the ecosystem was conducted successfully through a different workshops, events and international conferences.
The final aim of i-TRIBOMAT is to establish a sustainable business and serve as the European Single Entry Point for intelligent tribological characterization to predict the durability of conventional and novel materials for a wide range of industrial applications. For this, a draft business plan was created and governance model developed.
All these expected results will lead to minimising costs for product design, accelerated development cycles, reduces time-to-market ~20%, enhanced materials lifetime and improved components efficiency.
Potential impact and influence i-TRIBOMAT will bring are numerous - digitalisation of the European industry, supporting industrial innovation in European manufacturing industry, CO2 and energy-loss reduction across all sectors by optimising friction and wear, and many more.