ENDURE · Doctoral Network on Enabling Scaled Production of Durable Natural Fibre Components

The European moulded fibre products (MFP) manufacturing sector has global technology leadership. Job creation and sustainable growth in this sector contributes to the Green, Circularity and Digital Transition of the European economy. To succeed on the ambitious objectives set in the European Green Deal, the European natural fibre material (NFM) processing industry and the European moulded fibre products manufacturing industry must have access to a new generation of innovative, entrepreneurial, highly skilled research-oriented cross-disciplinary engineers. The ENDURE doctoral network aims to train 12 Doctoral Candidates on cross-disciplinary topics of: (i) natural fiber-based materials engineering; (ii) product design and production engineering with fiber-based materials; (iii) digital manufacturing technologies and Industry 4.0 for the natural fiber industry. The eventual hybrid cross-disciplinary profiles of the DCs of ENDURE are currently extremely rare or not available as existing doctoral programmes in EU focus only on the individual aspects. Manufacturing firms dealing with the fibre materials thus currently suffer the lack of skilled personnel. A detailed understanding of the behaviour of new NFMs in production and design implications for MFPs will be developed within ENDURE. The project will foster innovations in NFM processing (using agricultural wastes, short fiber sources like eucalyptus, and recycled MFPs), in design and assembly of new production equipment for MFPs, in modelling solutions (both multiphysics and AI/ML based) for optimizing production, and deployment of sensors and digital twins. The methods will be used for demonstrator MFP production across five industry sectors.Successful completion of ENDURE will (i) expand the use of fibre-based materials from 2D packaging to 3D products; (ii) adopt the relevant digital technologies for the engineering of natural fibre-based products; (iii) digitalize the fibre-based materials moulding processes.