Biological transformation of additive manufacturing processes for the sustainable manufacturing of bio-inspired products

The project will enable the biological transformation of Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes by integrating bio-inspiration (complex lattice structures), bio-intelligent technologies and architectures (cognitive and evolutionary capabilities), and biomaterials (fully recyclable biocomposites) into Fused Granulate Fabrication (FGF) additive manufacturing technology.

The bio-intelligent architecture consists of:
1) An integrated process-structure-property-performance (PSPP) open optimisation tool
2) High-precision and digitised FGF equipment
3) A novel cognitive control system with self-X capabilities (self-configuration, self-monitoring, self-optimisation, and self-healing) for real-time data-driven decision-making, providing autonomy to the printing process.

Additionally, the AI-based gentelligence system will enable the long-term evolution of the AM process as an organism that evolves from generation to generation, allowing continuous improvement of the AM process and future printed products (lifelong learning), ensuring the reliability and sustainability of the production process. The technologies will be validated in the wind energy sector through the highly optimised, bio-inspired first-time-right fabrication of large offshore blade components.

AIMEN is the coordinator of the project and is responsible for the design of the FGF printhead, the generative design tool for bio-inspired structures, and the multi-objective reinforcement learning solution for process evolution.