Finaland's Numobio project to digitise biocomposite design

In addition, the other development area is to develop single fibre testing with microrobotics. The project activities drive innovation that will establish Finnish leadership in the quickly growing high-value biocomposite markets, opening exciting opportunities for exports, ExpandFibre Ecosystem said on its website.

Numobio project will take a crucially important development step to bring biocomposite material design to a digital age. In this R&D area of the project, VTT and the other project partners co-develop ProperTune material modeling tool set according to real life needs of company use cases and create multiscale modeling chain from molecular and microscale level to component and system-level analysis to link material structure to product properties. The use of advanced numerical technologies will speed up the discovery of new functional materials compared to the traditional, experimental approach. In the second R&D area, Tampere University joins forces with other project partners to develop single fibre testing using microrobotics, with an aim to have a deeper understanding of the fibre properties.

In the Numobio project, the partners aim to develop entirely new structure-based material models capable to predict properties and performance with an unprecedented accuracy. In addition, novel material characterization methods are being developed, such as X-ray microtomography analysis, composite testing methods, single fibre testing and micromechanic testing of fiber-matrix bonding.

“I am glad to see the Numobio project bring together actors from the entire value chain of the biocomposite R&D, and as an eventual result of our work, I hope to see an increase in the portion of Finnish biocomposite industry in the European Union’s plastics industry,” research team leader Marko Mäkipää from VTT concludes.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)