Published 01/14/2025

JEC Innovation Award 2025 winners explore new composite frontiers

The following companies, organizations and project consortia featured strong collective innovation concepts, to be on display at JEC World 2025 in March.

Edited by: Grace Stubbins

Senior Managing Editor, CompositesWorld and Products Finishing

Category: Aerospace – Parts

Source | DLR/Airbus Operations GmbH

Multifunctional Fuselage Demonstrator (MFFD)

A Clean Sky 2 funded consortium of 12 European organizations led by Airbus Operations GmbH investigated thermoplastic composites for commercial fuselage applications. The resulting full-scale demonstrator of a typical single aisle commercial aircraft fuselage section covers novel design and built concepts, elementary parts manufacture for automation as well as thermoplastic welding for sub- and major component assembly.

Companies: Airbus Operations GmbH, with partners Airbus Aerostructures GmbH (Germany); Aernnova Aerospace and affiliates (Spain); Diehl Aviation Laupheim GmbH (Germany); DLR – German Aerospace Center (Germany); Fidamc (Spain); Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e. V. (Germany); GKN Fokker Aerospace B.V. (Netherlands); NLR – Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (Netherlands); SAM XL (Netherlands); TU Delft (Netherlands); Saab AB (Sweden)

Aerospace – Process

FibreLine

FibreLine is a system for the high-rate manufacturing of composite structures. It provides end-to-end automation for preforming, reportedly significantly accelerating the production rate of carbon fiber and other composite components in the aerospace, defense and renewable energy industries.

Companies: Loop Technology (U.K.) with partners FANUC (U.K.); Zünd (U.K.); and the National Composites Centre (U.K.)

Source | Loop Technology

Automotive & Road Transportation – Parts

Source | Jaguar Land Rover (JLR)

Sustainability optimized composite automotive (SOCA)

The SOCA project purpose is to decarbonize the manufacturing of composite component for automotive applications, focusing first on low-volume carbon fiber parts. The main challenges were to reduce the CO₂e footprint while maintaining the performance and light-weightiness.

Companies: JLR (U.K.) and partners Far-UK Ltd. (U.K.); CCP Gransden Ltd. (U.K.) and iCOMAT Ltd. (U.K.)

Automotive & Road Transportation – Process

Thermoplastic sandwich molding technology

Thermoplastic sandwich molding technology enables the fully automated production of 3D-molded components in a material-efficient, lightweight sandwich construction. The potential of this hybrid technology was demonstrated using a storage compartment cover from a truck driver’s cab.

Companies: Fraunhofer IMWS (Germay) and partners Daimler Truck AG (Germany); ElringKlinger AG (Germany); ThermHex Waben GmbH (Germany); edevis GmbH (Germany); and Engel Austria GmbH (Austria)

Source | Fraunhofer IMWS

Building & Civil Engineering

Daccuss house wall

Source | TechnoCarbon Technologies GbR

Carbon fiber stone (CFS) is a material combining carbon-negative stones and bio-based fibers. It serves as an eco-friendly replacement for CO₂-intensive concrete in house walls. Each square meter of CFS wall captures 59 kilograms of CO₂, whereas traditional cement walls release 98 kilograms of CO₂.

Companies: TechnoCarbon Technologies GbR (Germany) and partners DITF (Germany); LSL GmbH (Germany); Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (Germany); AHP GmbH & Co. KG (Germany); Technical University Munich (Germany); University of Hamburg (Germany); Peer Technologies GmbH & Co. KG (Germany); Grein srl (Italy); Convoris Group GmbH (Germany); RecyCoal GmbH (Germany); ITA, Institut für Textiltechnik der RWTH Aachen University (Germany); and Lisd GmbH (Germany)

Circularity & Recycling

Induction heating-based rCF reclaiming

Carbon fiber is sensitive to electromagnetic fields with a specific frequency range. This induction heating (IH)-based pyrolysis technology employs high-frequency magnetic fields, generating rapid, localized heating in carbon fibers to enable efficient polymer matrix incineration. This method more energy-efficient than traditional sources, supports continuous production and preserves the mechanical performance of rCF.

Source | Ilsung Composites Corp.

Companies: Ilsung Composites Corp. (South Korea) and partners Korea Textile Machinery Convergence Research Institute (South Korea); Institute of Textile Machinery and High Performance Material Technology (ITM), Technische Universität Dresden (Germany); Wagenfelder Spinnereien GmbH (Germany); Cramer&Co. GmbH (Germany); and Hyundai Motors Corp. (South Korea)

Design, Furniture & Home

Source | Cobra International

Stylish and recyclable carbon fiber furniture

Cobra and its partners have coordinated the design, engineering, material selection and manufacturing of a range of innovative carbon fiber-based furniture products. The furniture uses recyclable epoxy resins, along with other production waste, and recycled raw materials.

Companies: Cobra International (Thailand) and partners Aditya Birla Chemicals Ltd. – Advanced Materials (Thailand); Burapha University (Thailand); Hankuk Carbon Co. Ltd. (South Korea); and Luxara Design Co. Ltd. (Thailand)

Digital, AI & Data

DigiTwin: 3D imaging, analysis and digital twinning

Source | New Frontier Technologies

Partners have innovated a digital twin of as-manufactured composite components based on advanced computed tomography (CT) imaging and machine learning, which effectively maps fibers and defects from 3D images to create a detailed finite element mesh for high-fidelity performance simulation of composite components.

Companies: New Frontier Technologies (Australia), with partners CTLab – Australian National University (Australia); and Digital Composites Factory (Germany)

Maritime Transportation & Shipbuilding

FIBRE4YARDS

FIBRE4YARDS has developed new composites production technologies to redefine shipbuilding by adopting a modular construction and automated processes such as additive manufacturing, reusable molds that can adopt double curvature shapes, curved pultruded profiles, stamped thermoplastics and new connection technologies to facilitate the assembly of all parts. In addition the project has developed new design tools and a production software based on IoT.

Source | International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE)

Companies: International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering – CIMNE (Spain) and companies Curve Works (Netherlands), Robtrusion (Spain), 10XL (Netherlands); Compass Ingeniería y Sistemas SA – CompassIS (Spain); Institut de Recherche Technologique Jules Verne (France); Inegi (Portugal); Técnicas y Servicios de Ingeniería SL (Spain); Bureau Veritas (France); Lodz University of Technology (Poland); L-UP Sas (France) and Zafiro Business Solutions Kft (Hungary)

Renewable Energies

ZEBRA – Zero wastE Blade ReseArch project

The ZEBRA project’s aim is to demonstrate the technical, economic and environmental relevance of thermoplastic wind turbine blades on a full-scale demonstrator, with an eco-design approach to enable a high recycling rate.
Two full-scale thermoplastic wind turbine blades (62.2 and 77.4 meters) have been manufactured by LM Wind Power with Arkema’s Elium resin and Owens Corning’s Ultrablade fabrics and tested using accredited methods. Recycling solutions have been developed, to generate recycled Elium monomer and to recover glass fiber at pilot scale.

Companies: IRT Jules Verne (France) and partners Arkema (France); Canoe (France); Engie (France); LM Wind Power (Denmark); Owens Corning (France); and Suez (France)

Source | IRT Jules Verne

Sports, Leisure & Recreation

Source | The Gun Sails von Osterhausen GmbH

Honey roots technology

Honey-roots-technology (HRT) is a fiber-reinforced 3D structure that is superficially anchored in the core. The HRT laminate shows optimal mechanics while enabling an infusion process with significantly reduced waste. This technology was used to construct a recyclable surfboard. With a layup consisting of lyocell and cellulose, a core out of lignin and recycled content, the majority of the material composition has a wood origin. The resin system used is bio-based and recyclable.

Companies: The Gun Sails von Osterhausen GmbH (France) and companies RWTH Aachen University (Germany); Aditya Birla Chemicals – Advanced Materials (Germany); Chemnitz University of Technology (Germany); Norafin Industries GmbH (Germany); Evonik Operations GmbH (Germany); and Jackson Insulation GmbH (Germany)