Project MapUmCra has started
October 2025, Sankt Augustin (Germany) – In vehicle development, accurately predicting crash behavior poses a major challenge, as the forming process of lightweight sheet metal components can lead to local material damage in areas of high internal stress, which has so far been insufficiently accounted for. The research project MapUmCra develops new methods to realistically and efficiently transfer such damage from forming simulations to crash simulations. At the kick-off workshop at Schloss Birlinghoven, the project teams met with experts from the automotive industry.
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Project RESTORE – Successful Review
September 25, 2025 – the RESTORE consortium came together in Brussels for the official EC Review Meeting. Hosted at Philanthropy House in Brussels, the agenda was full and engaging:
- Project overview – achievements, milestones, and scientific objectives
- In-depth presentations from each Work Package (WP1–WP8) covering requirement analysis, sustainable cladding materials, digital tools, the remanufacturing platform, business model innovation, dissemination, and management
- Constructive discussions with reviewers and partners on results, challenges, and the path forward
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Coupled Simulation of Vehicle Suspension Systems – A successful Master's Thesis
July 2025, Sankt Augustin (Germany) – Driving dynamics simulations, such as those used in Formula racing or vehicle development, place high demands on numerical modeling: the deformation of individual components directly influences the movement behavior of the entire chassis.
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New VMAP Working Group on Additive Manufacturing
June 2025 – Following the productive discussions at the VMAP User Forum 2025 in February, a clear consensus emerged: the additive manufacturing industry urgently needs standardized data formats. In response to this demand, the VMAP SC has established a dedicated Additive Manufacturing Working Group to develop comprehensive standards for AM processes.
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Project SmartEM – Successful Review
March 13, 2025 – Computational engineering models have enhanced design and analysis processes but remain difficult to reuse, exchange, and integrate into larger systems. The SmartEM project addresses these challenges by developing a reference architecture for engineering model spaces, enabling better collaboration, reducing costly design corrections, and promoting early data and model exchanges. By shifting from data spaces to model spaces, SmartEM paves the way for a broader data and model economy in manufacturing, ultimately helping end-users reduce development times.
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VMAP User Meeting 2025
February 2025, Sankt Augustin (Germany) – On February 18 and 19, 2025, leading figures from research and industry met at Birlinghoven Castle for the annual User Forum of the VMAP Standards Community. The aim of the event was to further develop the open VMAP standard for virtual material modeling and set the course for efficient, interoperable, and digital manufacturing.
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NAFEMS VMAP Webinar – How to use and implement VMAP in your own code
December 17, 2024, Online (via NAFEMS) – VMAP is a vendor-neutral standard for CAx data storage to improve interoperability in virtual and physical engineering workflows. The VMAP standard can be used to transfer data between simulation codes and to store data from physical experiments or machine monitoring, thus closing the gap by creating the world's first CAx workflow interface standard. In this webinar, Fraunhofer SCAI will provide an initial overview of the standard's technical capabilities and how it can be connected to your own software solutions.
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Project GEAR-UP has been started
October 20 to 21, 2024, Trondheim (Norway) – The integration of recycled materials continues to pose challenges for the manufacturing industry, as the quality of the products depends on the interaction between the materials used and the manufacturing processes. Variations in trace elements and chemical properties affect additive manufacturing processes such as 3D printing. The GEAR-UP project aims to develop digital tools to facilitate the use of recycled materials in metal and plastics processing. At the kick-off meeting in Trondheim, 12 international project partners met at SINTEF Manufacturing AS and Aker Solutions Hydropower AS to discuss technical details and the further elaboration of use cases.
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VMAP 1.2 Release
August 29, 2024, Sankt Augustin (Germany) – With the new version v1.2 of the VMAP standard, data from real measurements and production monitoring can now also be stored in a structured way and made available for further simulation tasks.
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Project BASE has been started
July 30 to 31, 2024, Berlin (Germany) – The BASE project aims to develop the digital battery passport, which every larger battery will be required to have in the future. The passport will contain continuously collected data on the "State of Health" as well as information on the supply chain, the manufacturing process and material data. At the kick-off meeting in Berlin, 19 international project partners met for an initial exchange of ideas and planning.
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ITEA project SmartEM has been started
April 2024, Eindhoven (Netherlands) – SmartEM aims to overcome the limitations of current engineering models by developing a reference architecture for engineering model spaces. The architecture will enable the reuse, exchange and integration of engineering computational models. SmartEM will use AI-powered methods to create surrogate models from heterogeneous data sources and enable their recombination within a given technical domain. Partners in this project are Philips Electronics NL, Canon Production Printing, Thermo-Fisher, Siemens Software, KU leuven, TU Eindhoven, Reden, SemLab, TNO, ACD, Alpata, Inovasyon Mühendislik and Fraunhofer SCAI.
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ITEA project VMAP analytics had its final review
April 2024, Stockholm (Sweden) – The final review of the VMAP Analytics project took place on 9 April 2024 in an online/hybrid format. It was hosted by the project leader, Swerim AB from Sweden. Ovako, Gränges, Prevas, Morgårdshammar, Gemit from Sweden and Fraunhofer SCAI from Germany also participated. JF. Lavignon and E. Roddenbach from the ITEA office, S. Liljeblad, an ITAC representative, external reviewers from Software AG (GER) and Bittium (FIN) and the project mentor R. Ionescu from NXP (ROM) were also involved in the review.
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EU-project ALABAMA has been started
February 2024, Trondheim (Norway) – The EU project ALABAMA (Adaptive Laser Beam Control for Additive Manufacturing) had its kick-off event at the coordinator SINTEF Manufacturing. The partners Aerobase Innovations AB, Fraunhofer IWS, Fraunhofer SCAI, Eurecat – Centro Tecnológico, Luleå tekniska universitet, IRIS srl, flowphys as, Stellantis/CRF, Nordic Additive Manufacturing AS, GKN Aerospace Sweden AB, and Technovative Solutions LTD (TVS) presented their plans and contributions.
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First VMAP User Meeting
February 2024, Schloss Birlinghoven (Germany) – The VMAP Standards Community (VMAP SC) held its first user forum at Schloss Birlinghoven. Over 20 contributions from software partners, from ongoing R&D projects and the VMAP working groups provided a detailed insight into the ongoing VMAP standardization activities.
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EU-project RESTORE has been started
January 2024, Lisbon (Portugal) – The EU project RESTORE (sustainable remanufacturing solution with an increased degree of automation and recycling content in the laser and plasma-based process) had its kick-off meeting at partner EWF in Lisbon. Application partners from the automotive, shipping, railway and aviation sectors presented their requirements - initial concepts from the software partners were discussed.
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