RFPs: Innovative Advanced Materials for Product Monitoring, Maintenance and Repair Strategies in Construction Sector

Scope

• 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 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.

Funding Information

• Budget (EUR) – Year 2025: 30 000 000
• Contributions: around 6000000

Expected Outcomes

• Projects are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:
  • Support the implementation of the Commission Communication on Advanced Materials for Industrial Leadership.
  • 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.

Eligibility Criteria

• Entities eligible to participate:
  • Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from nonassociated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call/topic.
  • A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such under national law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.
• To become a beneficiary, legal entities must be eligible for funding.
• To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the following countries:
  • the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions:
    • Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.
  • the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States:
    • Aruba (NL), Bonaire (NL), Curação (NL), French Polynesia (FR), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (FR), Greenland (DK), New Caledonia (FR), Saba (NL), Saint Barthélemy (FR), Sint Eustatius (NL), Sint Maarten (NL), St. Pierre and Miquelon (FR), Wallis and Futuna Islands (FR).
  • countries associated to Horizon Europe;
    • Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom.

For more information, visit EC.