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With 18 years of expertise, is a Spanish technology center headquartered in Getafe, just outside of Madrid, that focuses on composites. It is well-known for driving technological innovation mainly in the commercial aircraft industry via customers such as Airbus, Aernnova, Aciturri, Embraer, Leonardo and others.

Its experience also spans dozens of EU and nationally funded projects including:

• ISINTHER, ICARO and OUTCOME for in situ consolidated (ISC) thermoplastic composites (TPC)
• FUSINBUL for a lower cost composite pressure bulkhead
• Multiple Clean Sky 2 demonstrators including: GRA (Green Regional Aircraft), ARE (Advanced Rear End) and MFFD (Multifunctional Fuselage)
• HERWINGT (Hybrid Electric Regional Wing Integration Novel Green Technologies) to demonstrate a regional turboprop wing enabling 15% less fuel consumption and 20% less weight compared to current models.

FIDAMC’s new 2024-2028 strategy seeks to expand its expertise further into defense, helicopters and space, as well as in non-aerospace sectors such as rail, marine, energy and infrastructure. FIDAMC’s geographical presence is also increasing via centers of excellence in Illescas, Seville and Cadiz that will  develop composites use in additive manufacturing (AM), UAVs/future mobility and the hydrogen economy.

CW has written about FIDAMC for more than a decade, including Sara Black’s tour in 2012 and article in 2016 on the first demonstration of ISC TPC wing structures, produced using automated fiber placement (AFP) without an autoclave. FIDAMC was a pioneer in this technology, producing a full-scale demonstrator panel with co-consolidated omega stringers and required <2% porosity.  But it has also played a key role in many other projects and developments CW has covered.

Here, I give more details about FIDAMC’s new strategy and ongoing developments based on my 2024 tour in Getafe and recent interview with FIDAMC’s new CEO, Ernesto González.

History, new diversification

FIDAMC was founded in 2006 by Airbus, the central government research agency CDTI and the Community of Madrid. These founders continue to support the non-profit and are part of its Board of Trustees along with Tier 1 aircraft supplier Aciturri, automated equipment supplier MTorres and composite materials supplier Hexcel.

More recent additions to the board reflect FIDAMC’s diversification strategy, including high-speed rail and ship manufacturers, Talgo and Navantia, and energy/infrastructure solutions provider Acciona as well as the Polytechnic University of Madrid, one of many universities that FIDAMC works with.

“These new board members are educating us about the needs from other industries and how we can support them,” explains González. “This is a significant change for FIDAMC, and we are now diversified to cover a wide range of industries, as well as the education sector, which is an important part of our business.”

He adds that universities are an important vector, showing both the first seeds of new technologies and how they will evolve. “They are a vital part of the ecosystem we want to support, building on our long history in composites and acting as a bridge between universities and industry to jointly benefit from knowledge sharing and collaboration.”

Strategic areas, capabilities

“We are pioneers of advanced manufacturing solutions for cost-effective, lightweight and sustainable future mobility,” says González. “We are one of the few technocenters that is active and proficient in thermoset composites, as well as dry fiber and liquid resin processing, and we were one of the first in thermoplastic composites for airframe structures. Thermoplastic composites today are used mainly for secondary structures, but we want to advance the technology level so that they are able to be used for primary structure, and to identify the parts where they offer the best fit.”

Two additional strategic areas for FIDAMC are AM, which is discussed below, and robotics. “We offer cost-effective developments to reduce time to market for development,” says González, “but also to increase production speed for ramp-ups. We are targeting specific projects in robotics, but also AI, machine learning and complementary technologies to measure and control processes during composites manufacturing, in order to avoid lengthy NDT [nondestructive testing] later.”

FIDAMC also provides the full pyramid of testing capabilities. “We work from the size of coupons up to flyable parts,” notes González. During CW’s tour of FIDAMC in March 2024, I visited the laboratory in Getafe. It features four rooms and includes specimen preparation via assorted automated machines; a physical/chemical testing room with DSC, DMA, FTIR and micrograph equipment; another physical/chemical lab with climatic chambers; and areas that focus on new technology development, like the deposition technology discussed below.

“Our laboratory enables us to perform testing for materials and manufacturing processes, including our 100-square-meter NDT suite,” says González. “And this enables us to manufacture parts that are able to fly but also our production equipment is pretty much what you would see in the industry.” This includes six AFP/ATL machines, two autoclaves (6 × 8 meter and 1.5 × 3 meter), a 400°C oven, 30- and 1,000-ton heated presses and infrared preheater for stamping parts.

FIDAMC has conducted or participated in 90 R&T projects — including work in Airbus’ Wing of Tomorrow (WOT) and fuselage of tomorrow programs — and it is currently involved in seven EU projects: MC4, HERWINGT, FASTER H2, NEWFRAC, ENHANCE, GRAPHENE CORE and HERFUSE.

Some of its most recent achievements include:

• A folding wingtip and composite intake and exhaust structures for Airbus Up Next
• Multifunctional materials for the naval industry in ADMIRAL
• A composite airframe for the Diamond Gyrocopter
• High-impact resistance materials for open rotor aircraft in REDISH
• A UAV wing and fuselage for Airbus.
• Low observability materials for Airbus in GONDOLA.

“We’ve also helped produce a high-speed rail car body and door leaf,” notes González, “as well as a thermoplastic composite upper wing skin for Airbus and a rear pressure bulkhead for Leonardo.”

Main businesses

In terms of what FIDAMC will look like in the future, González notes there will be three main business areas: Technology Center, Advanced Manufacturing and Services.

“The technocenter and its R&D-related deliverables have been our core,” he explains, “but we will complement that with prototyping and pre-series or short-series manufacturing.  

“The way of working is different when you are delivering a part for R&D versus a final assembly line. And it’s important to create a specific business area for that, because even the culture that you need in your employees is different.

“The third element includes engineering services, our laboratory capabilities and also training solutions,” González continues. “Again, it’s not the same when you are delivering engineering services as a technocenter dedicated to R&D compared to supporting specific companies in a variety of industry sectors. We will have these three business lines working in parallel and also taking advantage of the knowledge we create in R&D that can then be applied in services and pre-serial manufacturing.”

New locations for advanced manufacturing

In addition to FIDAMC’s original technocenter near Madrid, FIDAMC has opened an office in Brussels to facilitate participation in European R&D programs and collaboration with EU institutions and companies in the field of composite materials and advanced manufacturing.

It will also have operations at the nearby Airbus Illescas site (see CW’s 2024 plant tour), where it will focus on development of dry fiber preforms and resin transfer molding (RTM), as well as composite tanks for storing compressed hydrogen gas and also tanks for storing cryogenic liquid  hydrogen.

“In 2025, we will also begin operations in the CFA center for advanced manufacturing in Cadiz,” says González. CFA stands for “Center for Innovation in Advanced Manufacturing Technologies Aeronautical and Naval of Cadiz.” It is being established by the regional government of Andalucia, in cooperation with Airbus, Navantia, the University of Cadiz, the naval maritime cluster of Cadiz and the Andalucian aerospace cluster (HELICE). Housed in a new building in the Technological Park TecnoBahía, in Puerto Real (Cádiz), it will offer paid services to companies to aid with development of innovation projects in advanced manufacturing.

“This center will be mostly dedicated to 3D printing and robotics, as well as metrology and 3D scanning,” notes González, “which are complementary with the carbon [fiber] composite technologies that we work with in Getafe, including robotic processes.” FIDAMC will also collaborate with the Center for Innovation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Urban Air Mobility (CUAM), being established in Seville together with the Spanish Space Agency which is headquartered there. “This will allow us to keep growing in niche markets that have high future potential, such as space, drones and advanced air mobility,” he adds.

The 3D printing machines in Cadiz will be used for metals, polymers and composites, and include a large-format extrusion printer from CEAD (Delft, Netherlands). “This machine includes two robots that can work in parallel or independently to print parts up to 10 meters long and 2 meters high,” says González. “3D printing can be used to produce tooling for composite parts manufacturing but also to functionalize some parts. We can also recycle thermoplastic materials into extrusion pellets, and the center has an AGV-mounted robotic drilling and riveting machine from Loxin [Esquiroz, Spain], mainly for projects with Airbus.”

The CFA will also focus on the maritime sector, including remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and collaboration with ship manufacturers. “Work here will reinforce our aerospace activities but also diversify our technologies and customers,” he continues, noting that many of the parts manufactured will need to be tested and/or qualified, “where we can use our laboratory here and in Getafe.”

Smart structures, SHM – Microwire

As FIDAMC expands its geographical and market horizons, it continues to broaden its activities in multifunctional composites. “We are looking at smart structures and how we can introduce electrical circuits that provide data within the structure targeting two objectives,” says González. “The first is to complement process monitoring during composites manufacturing. The second is to use that data to predict maintenance during the product life. And for that, it’s important to know how the part has been stressed, exposed to high or low temperatures, fatigued and so on. When you can read the structure, you can better prepare your maintenance program and better schedule the tasks or even eliminate tasks that are not needed based on the data.”

To introduce this data gathering from the structure, González explains that FIDAMC is mostly working with piezoelectric sensors and electromagnetic microwires (see CW’s coverage of this technology). “We're working to not only obtain the data but also to understand the resilience of the microwire throughout the life of the aircraft. The resistance of the microwire inserted within CFRP [carbon fiber-reinforced polymer] is our area of expertise. But if this is going to be certified, you need to ensure that the microwire is delivering reliable data and also understand if it is not delivering the right data.

“From a manufacturing technology point of view, you need to understand how to integrate a microwire within the structure,” he continues. “But you also need to know how to test its durability and its resilience against various service conditions. We have a laboratory where we can test different temperatures, humidity levels and also simulate fatigue loading. So, it’s a summary of effects. And we have discovered that when you have highly loaded structures, thermal loads are even more important because they could impact the microwire within the structure. For example, when you have aluminum with CFRP, which have different different thermal expansion, you create thermal loads. And this is another area we are studying, how these thermal loads are impacting the microwire within the part and how they are translated into mechanical loads, which then affect the data from the microwire.”

Developing lighter weight LSP, deicing

Another area of FIDAMC research is replacing the bronze mesh currently used for lightning strike protection (LSP) in composite aircraft parts. I actually saw this research in progress during my visit to FIDAMC in March 2024. There, I spoke with Silivia Calvo, head of the testing laboratory, NDT and quality and environmental management (QEM) in Getafe, as well as researcher Vanessa García.

“We are using a physical deposition chamber to evaluate alternatives for current bronze or copper mesh materials for LSP,” says GarcÍa. “We heat copper samples and it deposits onto the substrate, which in this case is a polyester veil. We are working to refine and scale up this technology.”

“Our testing shows good adherence of the copper to the surface,” notes González, “and when we also achieve homogeneity of the deposition, the electrical conductivity is roughly the same as a bronze mesh. The idea is to create a technology that is lighter weight and easier to automate during manufacturing.

“This is an investigation we have with a university,” he continues. “We are proving we have good conductivity, and the next step is to apply it evenly across the surface without having holes, which is a challenge. Next, we will work on how to industrialize from the lab scale to industry. Today, we are working at TRL 2, but the results so far are very promising.”

González describes another project developing a paint to create an icephobic surface — for example, it will resist the formation of ice. “We are working with a commercial paint to make the technology accessible but have added specific elements. The results so far are good, including ice tunnel testing in Austria. But it is also at laboratory level and low TRL. Thus, we still need to make it more industrial.”

He notes this is a passive solution, “but we also have been working in the Graphene Flagship project on an active solution, which inserts graphene flakes within the plies of a composite which then generate heat when electric current is applied. The idea is to combine the active approach using graphene and the passive icephobic paint to replace the current solution which uses bleed air from the aircraft engines, but which is also heavy. Instead, these two solutions could work together, using a small amount of electricity to prevent icing on aircraft parts. These projects are much lower in TRL and not as industrial as most of our projects at FIDAMC.”

Increased low TRL projects, transversal TPC center

González explains that a technocenter should be the bridge between university and industry. “But FIDAMC has mostly focused on projects at high TRL levels — for example, TRL 5-9. Most other technocenters are more focused on TRL 3-4. But these projects I discussed above are at a low TRL, and that is also part of our new strategy. We want to increase our business in high TRL projects, even going to prototyping and initial, short series production, but keep that at 60% while increasing our fundamental investigations to 40%.

“We are managing that here in Getafe with projects focused on TPCs, not just in automated layup, but also stamping and welding,” he notes. “And those technologies are a game changer, due to the higher production rates possible compared with thermoset composites. The goal is to remove riveting from assembly, mainly for primary aircraft structures. And if we are able to do this, aircraft production will change dramatically.”

González explains that especially for future single-aisle aircraft, a key challenge is to accelerate production ramp-ups. “The market is requesting many more aircraft than Boeing and Airbus are able to produce. Our technology at FIDAMC is supporting how to accelerate such ramp-ups and also how to further lightweight for continued reduction in fuel consumption. TPCs can help deliver these capabilities and also to other industries.

“However, this technology requires a lot of investment, both to achieve adoption in certified aircraft and to obtain industrial volume,” he continues. “We are proposing to create a transversal center to invest in this technology across industry sectors while maintaining each organization’s IP rights. We want to share investigations and improve the connections between all of these different groups, including OEMs, Tier suppliers, SMEs and R&D organizations. We are in discussion with Airbus, Aernnova and other technocenters in Spain, and many groups are showing their interest to participate in this center because they realize we need to do something. TPCs are becoming more and more important each day.”

But this is just one of the many technologies FIDAMC is committed to advancing. “We will continue to help decarbonize aviation,” González adds, “and also grow the use of composites. We are excited about where the industry is headed and how we can increase our ability to be a catalyst for new innovations, applications and industrialization.”

To learn more, visit FIDAMC at JEC 2025, Hall 6 Booth F107.