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Aimplas participating in Mat4Rail

02 Aug '18

2 min read

Courtesy: Aimplas

Aimplas is participating in the European project Mat4Rail, ‘Designing the railway of the future: fire resistant composite materials and smart modular design’, which aims to reduce the weight by replacing metallic structural components by light composite materials, and increase capacity and passenger comfort with smart modular design of interior spaces.

The project is expected to improve the railway infrastructure regarding costs, functioning and reliance, as well as timeliness, capacity and energy efficiency. This will also lead to reduction of costs of the life cycle. For this, innovative materials and a modular design for railway rolling stock are going to be developed.

A weight reduction of trains will happen by replacing metal parts by Fibre-Reinforced Polymers (FRPs) with certified mechanical and fire performance. Innovations for increasing railway’s capacity and passenger’s comfort will also be made by the modular design of railway interior parts.

The project, which started in October 2017, has already led to the development of new epoxy-resin formulations with improved flame-retardant properties to be applied in Fibre-Reinforced Polymers.

Two-year Mat4Rail is being coordinated by CIDETEC (Spain). Other 15 research institutes, companies and universities from seven European countries taking part are Instituto Tecnológico De Aragón and Aimplas-Instituto Tecnológico Del Plástico (Spain); Universitaet Bremen, Ima Materialforschung Und Anwendungstechnik, Nvgtr Gbr and Grammer Railway Interior (Germany); Centre Scientifique & Technique De L'industrie Textile Belge and Coexpair Sa (Belgium); Huntsman Advanced Materials (Switzerland) Gmbh, Escatec Switzerland and Accelopment (Switzerland); Rise Research Institutes Of Sweden Ab (Sweden); Asas Aluminyum Sanayi Ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi (Turkey); and Spirit Design - Innovation And Brand Gmbh and Indat Modellbau Werkzeugbau Formenbau (Austria).

The project Mat4Rail has received funds from the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking (S2R JU), one of the public-private partnerships within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India