Innovative Advanced Materials (IAMs) for product monitoring, smart maintenance and repair strategies in the construction sector (RIA) (Innovative Advanced Materials for Europe partnership)

Expected Outcome

Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

• Support the implementation of the Commission Communication on Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership[1].
• Break frontiers between functional and structural materials by applying monitoring applications enabling infrastructure management such as tracking, self-powering and self-sensing to reduce maintenance costs by at least 30% compared to the state-of-the-art.
• Reduce the resources (materials and energy) needed for constructions and lower environmental impacts by applying innovative advanced materials (IAMs) with improved performance of structural or functional components, combining longevity and efficiency, repairability and circularity (improving overall materials circularity by at least 30%);
• Proof of concept of the ‘safe and sustainable by design’ (SSbD) framework during the development phase of the new IAMs to avoid use of hazardous substances and lower environmental impact;
• Promote industrial uptake of IAMs by facilitating scalability and/or integration into leaner industrial production processes;
• Support acceptance of innovative construction materials for housing to achieve maximized user experience and comfort.

Scope

Extend the lifetime of materials used in the construction sector (e.g. cement, concrete, composites, technical textiles, plaster board, pipes) for which durability is often limited by poor stability and low flexibility and/or by increasingly aggressive and changing environments. Extending a products’ life (use phase) is an important pillar of a solid sustainable and circular strategy because it reduces materials demands. In addition, new materials fit for the circular economy should be easily dismantlable into reusable or recyclable components. The actual condition and functional performance of products, components and materials should be monitored and assessed and smart maintenance and repair functions implemented, ideally at the level of individual products or components. Autonomous repair systems often use sensors to detect changes in the material's condition through physical principles or mechanical deformation. The smart (AI) exploitation of collected data enables real-time monitoring of the material's condition. The surfaces created in the building process are ideal for smart solutions incorporating ubiquitous electronic systems.

Proposals should develop new and/or improved IAMs that increase recyclability, circularity and safety of construction materials reducing (raw) materials consumption by:

• Increased durability and reliability and reduced maintenance requirements (e.g. self-cleaning and/or self-healing properties, self-protection, increased stress resistance and innovative protection treatments such as corrosion and/or erosion resistance, increased fatigue resistance);
• Support smart material functionalities for continuous monitoring and in-service inspections, e.g. through integrated sensors, with multifunctional features (such as asset management tracking, self-powering and/or self-sensing for several parameters).

Multidisciplinary research activities should address at least two of the following:

• Develop strategies to accelerate the time-consuming performance evaluation step to greatly reduce the times to prototyping and then to market.
• Enhance sensor capabilities for tailored solutions through IAMs with extended physical sensor functionalities for mechanical-technological traits;
• Develop self-repairing and -healing materials for complex and resource-intensive structures, receptive to digital stimuli to retroactively influence material properties and integrating autonomous repair mechanisms to enhance their reliability (such as in composites, ceramics, coatings, technical textiles etc), extend their lifespan and enabling easy recycling;
• Develop (AI based) models like digital twins to utilize high-dimensional new sensor data and generate multimodal stimuli and functionalities for customised maintenance and repair plans, extending product lifetime economically and environmentally;
• Produce and share new knowledge on underlying multi-scale and multi-physics phenomena to better understand materials behaviour during their lifetime, develop and validate methodologies and suitable models to predict materials degradation (mechanical and/or environmental) and to assess the longevity of materials, components and products through accelerated testing and functional performance verification;
• Develop IAMs fit for modular off-site processing or 3D printing onsite;

In addition, all proposals should

• Use new digital technologies including data driven approaches to push the frontiers of designing and producing IAMs with new functionalities/performance, improve materials scalability and related processes and use analytical technologies and infrastructures to characterise the efficiency, quality and effectiveness of developed IAMs;
• Contribute to the availability of FAIR[2] data and methods for safety and sustainability assessment of IAMs and for decision-making processes (at the design, engineering and end-of-life stage of IAMs and products);
• Explore possibilities to transfer and use developed IAMs or technologies in other sectors;
• Assess safety, sustainability and circularity of all components during the entire innovation cycle as well as how to decompose and sort for enhanced recyclability of all components at the end of life, in line with the safe and sustainable by design (SSbD) framework.

Proposals need to address both the IAM development and all the supporting technologies (digital and physical) needed (not existing yet) to cover the entire value chain (material development, validation, production, processing, use and end of life). Any existing technologies that do not require development or adaptation should be mentioned in the proposal.

Proposals should involve appropriate expertise in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), particularly regarding the acceptance of innovative construction materials for housing for maximized user experience and comfort. This may involve a perception analysis of these materials, resulting functionalities and the development of optimization strategies.

Proposals submitted under this topic should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination.

Research should build on existing standards or contribute to standardisation of technologies encompassing sensing, self-repairing or self-healing materials. Interoperability for data sharing should be addressed, in accordance with the FAIR data principles. Projects should build on, or seek collaboration with, existing projects in EU Member States and Associated Countries and develop synergies with other relevant European, national or regional initiatives, funding programmes and platforms. Where relevant, projects are encouraged to take advantage of and connecting to European analytical research infrastructures and services.

Proposals could consider the involvement of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), whose contribution could consist of providing added value on new solutions for advanced materials in construction, including the ability to dismount and reuse, multifunctionality, smart maintenance and enhanced circularity and safety.

International cooperation is encouraged, especially with Japan.

In this topic the integration of the gender dimension (sex and gender analysis) in research and innovation content is not a mandatory requirement.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership Innovative Advanced Materials for the EU (IAM4EU). Proposals funded under this topic are part of the partnership portfolio and are expected to develop synergies with the related stakeholder community and contribute actively to the objectives of the partnership. The different stakeholder communities in IAM4EU are encouraged to coordinate amongst and across each other and foresee adequate resources for this as well as for the overall coordination with IAM4EU in the proposals.

Activities are expected to start at TRL 3 and achieve TRL 5-6 by the end of the project - see General Annex B.

[1] COM(2024) 98 final

[2] Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable data