COMPOSELECTOR – a high potential innovation

For the second year in a row, LIST is honoured to receive recognition from the Innovation Radar – a European Commission’s initiative to identify high potential innovations and innovators in EU-funded research – for its H2020 COMPOSELECTOR project.

To resolve social challenges and enable digital and green transition, while reducing costs and potential risks, manufacturing organisations need to improve their decision-making regarding the materials selected and design.

In 2017, LIST Materials Research and Technology department teamed up with strategic partners in Europe to develop COMPOSELECTOR – a Business Decision Support System (BDSS) for the selection and design of polymer-based composites (PMCs), integrating materials modelling and simulation workflows.  

Over the last few years, our materials researchers have developed no less than 11 major innovations, turning COMPOSELECTOR into a unique system which contributes to:  

• Increase the fraction of critical decisions thanks to materials’ modelling and simulation;
• Better select materials without needing lots of timeconsuming experiments;
• Accelerate the development, adoption and use of new materials, which currently take longer than designing and prototyping;  
• Substantially improve the product’s design and manufacturing;
• Analyse the influence of random and uncertain variables on manufacturing;
• Study different simulated materials and systems in identical environments (or the other way around);
• Integrate and connect to external thirdparty applications, then enabling a balance among performances, manufacturing as well as economic and life cycle aspects;
• Reduce time to market by shortening the design and preproduction phases;;
• Improve communication between customers, designers and decisionmakers through an online dedicated solution.

We enjoy the benefits of materials in almost every aspect of our daily lives – in our smartphones, computers, modes of transport, processes for energy conversion and distribution, medicine, etc. It is therefore essential for designers, manufacturers and business decision-makers to quickly screen and evaluate multiple design and processing scenarios, to support material innovation in a systemic way and so boost their competitiveness. As a matter of fact, the information collected during the conceptual phase of a product’s development improves decision-making during the whole life of the product. This increases potential of innovation with new material, manufacturing processes and structural concepts illustrating further our willingness in accelerating the translation of our materials research excellence towards purposely developed innovations.

In other words, COMPOSELECTOR improves the selection of materials and design, reduce costs and contribute to the digitalisation of manufacturing industries, giving them the possibility to constantly adapt their business to volatile environments, guaranteeing sustainable benefits.