Digi4Circular

Digital platform for data-driven and physics-based product development enabling a circular economy

Abstract:

The urgency to address the environmental impact of the prevailing linear economic paradigm has intensified, stressing the need for optimizing resource utilization, minimizing waste, and maximizing product value to achieve ecological and economic benefits. This is particularly critical in the automotive industry, where a significant volume of primary materials is employed. Recycling scrap materials in this sector can yield impressive 85% reduction in CO2 emissions. However, designing automotive parts for circularity requires innovative (1) tools and infrastructures to close current information gaps as well as (2) multi-purpose alloys with enhanced compatibility and processibility for scrap materials to increase recyclability of materials. This requires a comprehensive consideration of life cycle scenarios, potential constraints on recycled material, and adherence to changing standards and regulations. Digi4Circular project tackles these challenges by creating a robust digital workflow for circular product development integrated into the Synera low code platform, demonstrated on aluminium casting use case in the automotive sector. Through automated workflows, the project facilitates the generation of circular product designs and manufacturing possibilities, contingent on environmental impact assessments for different end-of-life scenarios. The approach relies on novel methods for material design and property prediction of circular alloys, rapid LCA and LCC analysis, knowledge extraction from norms and expert know-how, integrated by rule- and knowledge-based systems for automated product design generation. The workflow connects all necessary software tools and data generated throughout the value chain in a dedicated information space, whereas life cycle data for individual products is systematically stored in a Digital Product Passport accessible for all developers in the value chain.

List of participants:

N.	Participant organisation name	Short name	Country
1	UNIVERSITAET PADERBORN	UPB	Germany
2	EDAG ENGINEERING GMBH	EDAG	Germany
3	LKR LEICHTMETALLKOMPETENZZENTRUM RANSHOFEN GMBH	LKR	Austria
4	UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI FIRENZE	UNIFI	Italy
5	L.C.S.D. – Associação Data Colab – Laboratório Colaborativo para Serviços de Inovação Orientados para os Dados	DataCL	Portugal
6	SusDAT s.r.o.	susDAT	Czech Republic
7	EIT MANUFACTURING SOUTH SRL	EITM	Italy
8	FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG EV	FhG	Germany
9	BARNA STEEL SA	BARNA	Spain
10	FERIMET SL	FERI	Spain
11	AMIRES SRO	AMI	Czech Republic

Contact persons:	Coordinator:	Project Manager:
Name	Manuel Ott, M.Sc.	Eva Černá
Organisation	UPB	AMI
Email	manuel.ott@uni-paderborn.de	cerna@amires.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2024 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101177586, project Digi4circular