C-CLAW - The revolutionary Non-intrusive mechanical Fastener that facilitates life extension of existing infrastructures

Project Information

C_CLAW_C_HAWK

Grant agreement ID: 190132953

DOI

10.3030/190132953

Project closed

EC signature date 17 June 2022

Start date 1 March 2022

End date 31 October 2024

Funded under

• The European Innovation Council (EIC)

Total cost

€ 3 568 592,50

EU contribution

€ 2 498 014,75

Coordinated by

COLD PAD
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - C_CLAW_C_HAWK (C-CLAW - The revolutionary Non-intrusive mechanical Fastener that facilitates life extension of existing infrastructures)

Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2024-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Industrial customers have been looking for a long time for non-intrusive mechanical fastening solutions capable of being implemented during regular production. Indeed, conventional assembly methodologies like welding, drilling or riveting are considered as hot works (i.e: risk of explosion) and intrusive (damage of the structure). They may be cheap, but also proved to be sometimes inefficient in terms of environmental & societal impact, safety, associated costs or business interruption. This is where COLD PAD brought a disruptive innovation by introducing reliable and durable structural adhesive bonding techniques for harsh and explosive industrial environments like the Hydrogen industry. Besides the important CO2 reduction potential, our market creating innovation offers a value proposition to lower both capital and operational expenditures linked to structural asset integrity.

COLD PAD’s breakthrough idea to respond to this market need was to bring a new generation of fasteners bonded onto the surface (rather than in the material) with virtually no impact on the support. This was made possible thanks to a set of technologies bringing reliable and repeatable conditions for bonded assemblies and service life even in marine and harsh industrial environments. The disruption is both product-based with the fastener itself and process-based with the installation tooling creating an optimal and humidity-controlled environment. The technology called C-Claw is today protected by a series of 5 patent families.

COLD PAD’s technology is already widely accepted in the Nuclear and Marine&Offshore industry as a reliable solution to make construction and repairs easier and safer. Our challenge was to scale up our technology.

Hence, the objective of the project was to :
• Extend C-Claw fastener range, improve productivity and enhance robustness and reliability of our installation tool
• Prepare industrial scale up with volume target of 200 000 fasteners/year and 1000 installation tools
• Have an ATEX certified version of the C-Hawk (for safe use in potentially explosive atmosphere)
• Prepare our organization for the industrial scale

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The C_CLAW-C_HAWK project resulted in several significant findings and improvements.
We started by reselecting the proper adhesive and material for our range of fasteners. We concluded several hundreds of tests to characterize the compatibility of more than 15 types of material with more than 30 adhesive references. We also checked the industrial parameters regarding the adhesive to minimize industrial risk (in particular risk of shortage). This enabled us to select 2 polymers and 1 eco-friendly materials for our new range of fasteners. We satisfactorily checked the behaviour of these materials regarding time and temperature.

We then designed a new version of our current fastener for smaller loads and optimized the design toward less material consumption (-85% stainless steel compared to the current product) and lower cost. We also integrated several innovation bringing new functions such as improved resistance to the environment and faster productivity (less than 2 minutes compared to the former 25 minutes duration of process). We also rationalized the manufacturing process to prepare productivity and scale up.

For the concrete anchor, we defined a technical frame of work towards the definition of EU harmonized rules for surface bonded fasteners and the CE marking of our product.

Regarding the installation tool, we designed a simplified version of the installation tool for easier use on worksite and improved productivity. The design is based on simple manufacturing process, facilitating the scale up of the tool. The number of components was divided by three and a much more robust approach was applied in order to drastically reduce the need for maintenance. we built a new robust concept of tool enabling to achieve our goals with a cost divided by 6.
An installation process suitable for ATEX area was defined. The tool can be produced in a pneumatic version adapted for hazardous explosive environment on process units.

COLD PAD also worked on the Communication and the Preparation for Commercialization of its new range of C-Claw fasteners. We released 77 LinkedIn posts, 16 newsletters and 4 press release regarding bonded fasteners. We also organized several demonstrations and participated to a great number of events, conferences and 1 to 1 client meetings for a large number of applications of bonded fasteners in the Marine, Nuclear and Energy Industry (Wind Energy, O&G Industry) in France and Europe.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Thanks to the work achieved, we managed to identify an available and viable adhesive reference working on a wide variety of materials and with very good performance even under varying conditions. We confirmed new technological bricks enabling to extend the life duration of our anchors to 35 years. This was concretized by the Type Approval Certificate of the product by Bureau Veritas. We identified backup solution to mitigate risk of dependency toward single reference products.

The new design of fastener produced during the project has shown great performance under various types of loads: tension, shear, creep , immersion and accelerated ageing in highly humid atmosphere. The objective of a 300kg capacity was achieved, and the productivity target was exceeded with a process of less than 2 minutes and an installation of less than 45 seconds. The process was simplified so as to minimize trning to the bare minimum, with only a few hours training required.

The products and process were shown to various prospects and end-users, who showed satisfaction and proven interest for the solution. The tool was also tested on site and the easiness and performance of the installation was confirmed by end users.

Products-2

Final product range

Product demo

Wind_Turbine

Tank

Products

Test_bench