ORGANIC project to 3D print bio-inspired structures with bio-based materials

Project partners from 13 organizations and eight countries at the kick-off meeting in Vigo, Spain in June 2025. Source | ORGANIC project

Nature’s solutions have often been translated to economic sectors such as
architecture or healthcare. The EU-funded ORGANIC project will go one step further: It will not only 3D print bio-inspired structures with bio-based materials, but also integrate biology, engineering and information technology to create a self-learning system. This system will evolve through technologies like AI-driven cognitive and and evolutionary controls. 

Within the project, these developments will be applied to enhancing wind turbine blades. In addition, they will have the ability to be adapted to any field in manufacturing that may benefit from bio-based materials. The 4-year project, led by the Aimen Technology Centre (O Porriño, Spain), started on June 1, 2025. Iconiq Innovation (Harborough, U.K.) takes part in this project as the work package lead for “WP boosting bio-intelligence adoption in AM.”

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“Additive manufacturing [AM] is highly promising but has its challenges,” explains Andrea Fernández Martínez, AI researcher in Aimen and project coordinator. “It’s a young technology which needs to improve before it will yield first-time-right products. The bio-intelligent approach we take in ORGANIC is based on data and will give us the opportunity to create a system that will correct itself by comparing what has been produced with the ideal state towards a first-time-right fabrication.”

The project consortium has 13 partners, consisting of a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer, 3D printing companies for large composite parts, universities and research and technology organizations, as well as hardware and software companies, an innovation consultancy and an innovation network. It spans eight European countries and multiple disciplines.

“ORGANIC’s highly disciplinary is ambition: We take inspiration from nature, design new structures using bio-based materials, develop hardware as well as software and want the result to be adaptable across different manufacturing value chains. The use case in wind energy is our starting point.”

The project team will work on wind turbine blades to validate their technological developments. Expressed simply, the blades consist of a three-layer sandwich structure. Most of its middle layer is currently made of PET, PVC or balsa wood core. By 3D printing a customized core from bio-based materials, the blades can be more easily recycled while keeping their intended functionality and technical requirements. The new approach could help save cost and increase sustainability. 

In their first step, project partners will define the requirements of the sandwich structure’s new core. These requirements will influence the choice of the bio-based material as well as the AI-driven generative design of the components. A prototype of the printing head will be equipped with sensing technology and a self-X control system. It will be tested on the Aimen Laser Applications Centre’s AM pilot line. Analyzing the results will determine which sensors will be needed in the hardware’s second iteration.

In addition to this work, the software part of the project will aim to develop an AI-drive cognitive and evolutionary control system based on digital twins, leveraging a reinforcement learning framework. Asset Administration Shell (AAS)-based digital twins will be integrated for standardization and interoperability via an ontology-based knowledge system.

One of the five projects in the scope of bio-intelligent manufacturing, this project has received funding from HORIZON-CL4-2024-TWIN-TRANSITION-01-TWO-STAGE under grant agreement number 101178127. Funded by the European Union.