The COMIC project concludes successfully by validating three new, lighter and more sustainable multi-material components

The COMIC project has successfully concluded its fourth and final year, during which three new multimaterial components were manufactured and validated: two components for the automotive sector and one component for the aeronautical sector.

These new components have achieved significant weight savings compared to the original conventional components. In this regard, weight reduction values ranging from 32% to 45% were obtained.

In addition, the new components offer overall improvements in mechanical properties in all three use cases.

Furthermore, the cost and carbon footprint of the new demonstrators were analyzed.

More specifically, the main conclusions drawn from this final year are as follows:

ACT1 – Embryonic data space for multimaterial manufacturing value chains

• It has been demonstrated that the defined architecture is suitable for supporting flexible manufacturing scenarios, enabling the joint exploitation of data from different processes and laying the foundations for advanced analysis, simulation, and decision-support functionalities in later stages of the project.
• The localization, understanding, and reuse of data generated by different Digital Twins have been ensured, overcoming the typical fragmentation of industrial systems and facilitating their combined exploitation in operation, maintenance, and optimization scenarios, with the aim of developing predictive and prescriptive digital twins in line with the project objectives and Industry 4.0 principles.
• The system components (FIWARE, Keyrock, Wilma, IoT Agents, OpenMetadata, OPC UA/MQTT protocols) have been validated, confirming that they operate securely, interoperably, and in compliance with the requirements defined in the different use cases.

ACT2 – New multimaterial component concepts

• The specific models of the UC3 multimaterial joint have been validated for integration into previously developed models in order to analyze the complete system.
• The new TRL4 multimaterial component design concepts have been validated and were subsequently manufactured and tested in later activities.

ACT3 – New highly flexible processes for multimaterial manufacturing

• Support was provided through simulation tasks for the manufacturing of the components.
• The previously established manufacturing processes for obtaining the new components in all three use cases were validated in a laboratory environment (TRL4).

ACT4 – Digital strategies for flexible and zero-defect manufacturing

• Digital twins of the different production processes were developed, defining data flows and technologies that enable their implementation and further refining the aspects related to their deployment. The complete system was tested as a functional testbed, demonstrating data flow from real physical devices to consuming applications such as dashboards, analytical modules, and Digital Twin services.
• Manufacturing molds for component parts in the three use cases were developed. These molds include embedded sensors that enabled the collection of relevant process information in order to minimize optimization time.
• Surface and volumetric NDT quality control techniques were successfully developed and applied in all three use cases.
• Artificial intelligence was successfully applied in some quality control processes (UC1).
• An industrial Plug&Play wireless sensor network was designed, implemented, and successfully validated in a laboratory environment, aimed at the rapid and non-intrusive digitalization of production lines, demonstrating its ability to digitize real production lines in a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective manner.

ACT5 – Validation of flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing of new multimaterial components – TRL5

• The demonstrators were validated in a TRL5 environment, confirming their good mechanical performance under both static and dynamic conditions.
• The impact of manufacturing the new demonstrators was analyzed, including their weight, the CO₂ emissions associated with their production, and their cost.

FAGOR ARRASATE participates in this project alongside DGH ROBOTICA, AUTOMATIZACION Y MANTENIMIENTO INDUSTRIAL, S.A., AUTOTECH ENGINEERING, S.L., SOFITEC AERO, S.L., INESPASA, ENDITY, and MANAGING COMPOSITES, S.L. Additionally, several renowned technology centers participate in the consortium as subcontracted entities, including IDEKO, ITI, KONIKER, TEKNIKER, and AIMEN.

This project has been funded by the CDTI and supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.