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Eco-efficient and high productive stone processing by multifunctional materials

Objective

Figures on world stone trade show that the market share of the EU countries has been decreasing over the last few years in favour of relatively new Far East and Southern American countries. The main reasons for this is that the sector has not made any sign ificant technological progress and operations are faced by low productivity and efficiency, fluctuation in the quality of the final stone product, huge quantities of waste material, high energy consumption and critical safety for the workers. The developme nt of environmentally friendlier technologies is also an issue, considering that stone is a non-renewable resource. Furthermore the European equipment manufacturers have been made more aware of safety and health (noise, dust, etc.) of the operators through recent stringent regulations that requires for alternative technologies. To address this issue scattered attempts have been registered in Europe to apply knowledge-based multifunctional materials in stone tools and equipment. The most promising are based on the application of Shape Memory Alloys (SMA). Several products have been developed by our Core Group SMEs based on this novel material. However, the available results show that macro-scale SMA elements have a lower level of reliability and performance r eproducibility with respect to micro-scale SMA devices so far applied in the medical sector. The proposed project aims at developing optimized procedures and qualification methodologies in SMA processing able to guarantee repeatable and reliable performanc es as well as a predictable life-cyde for SMA elements to be widely applied in the stone sector. The proposal complies with the Gall as it aims at grouping a large number of European lAGs fully representing the 60.000 stone SMEs with the goal to generate t he necessary knowledge on SMA technology to improve their technological status and transform the rather traditional and regionalised Stone Sector into a modern, competitive #

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP6-2003-SME-2
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Funding Scheme

Collective - SMEs-Collective research projects

Coordinator

D'APPOLONIA SPA
Address
Via san nazaro 19
Genova
Italy

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EU contribution
€ 0,00

Participants (26)

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Last update: 5 July 2010

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/516417

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