FLEXCRASH PROJECT

Flexible and hybrid manufacturing of green aluminium to produce tailored adaptive crash-tolerant structures

Flexcrash aims to develop a flexible and hybrid manufacturing technology to enhance weight reduction and crash resistance by locally reinforcing the critical areas for a crash event, creating structures that are safer and lighter compared to current solutions. 

The project promotes a wide usage of the advanced materials and manufacturing solutions to build a new generation of crash-tolerant structures with outstanding performance under a wide range of impact angles and unexpected crash conditions.  

Frontal crashes accounts for the 70% of total car collisions. Therefore, Flexcrash solutions are focused on a front-end structure.  However, these solutions can be transferred to a wide range of safety-related structures in other locations of the vehicles where the risk of passenger’s injuries is high.  

Flexcrash’s technology contributes to directly reduce the fatalities risks in road crashes, but also reducing CO2 emissions coming from the direct contribution of the lightweighting of car body parts, and from the simplification of the entire supply chain.  

Start-end date

1 September 2022 – 31 August 2026

48 months

Collaborative project

10 partners

5 European countries

Funded under

Horizon Europe Programme

CL5-2021-D6-01-10

Overall budget

€3,971,744.25

Our ambition is to develop a low weight and circular automotive front structure that supports the EU long-term goals on zero emissions mobility and reduction in injuries and fatalities due to crashes.

SERGI PARAREDA

Flexcrash technical coordinator

Metallic and Ceramic Materials Unit of Eurecat

ONE STEP AHEAD

A unique concept with potential to be implemented in the European automotive industry

Flexcrash will respond to current and future challenges in modelling and manufacturing for the development of vehicles with improved performance, cost-effectiveness and reduced environmental footprint.  

Vehicle lightweighting

Flexcrash applies a new hybrid manufacturing concept contributing to a more efficient use of resources and a weight reduction, as well as optimising the materials supply chain, which turns in a significant cost saving.

Passengers' safety

The project’s solutions contribute to achieve a long-term improvement of car safety, allowing a direct reduction of the fatalities’ risks in road crashes and passenger’s injuries. 

STAY IN TOUCH!

Subscribe to our community of interest to be informed about the latest news and developments of Flexcrash project
SUBSCRIBE NOW

OUTPUTS

Flexcrash expected results

Crash simulation from advanced material models to virtual testing

Testing the project’s tolerant structures under different crash scenarios to validate the simulation approach.

Flexible and hybrid manufacturing technologies

Transforming the traditional automotive sector and adapting to the extensive agility, versatility, interoperability needs of the upcoming industry.

New crash tolerant structures

Offering the tools to produce and build lighter and safer car structures.

Advanced testing on crash, toughness, fracture, and fatigue

Optimizing the materials and manufacturing parameters and reducing the implementation time.

Identification of safety needs for current and future mobility

Identifying and demonstrating future relevant crash scenarios.

PROJECT PHASES

1

Crash information and improving crash simulation building

Design of the crash tolerant structures according to the most probable crashes with high risk of passenger’s injuries.   

2

Development of material and manufacturing solutions

Proposition of the different material and solutions for the different parts of the front-end structure used as project’s demonstrator.  

3

Virtual and experimental validation

Exploration of further weight and crash performance improvements. All the materials, manufacturing technologies and design of crash tolerant structures will be here assessed by crash tests and virtual modelling.