Certification challenge for self-responsive materials in aeronautics

Innovation and continuous development of cutting-edge materials find robust interest of companies for using avantgarde technologies. Material research is widening toward mainly two directions: the improvement of the existing functionalities and the development of new functionalities of the materials. However, widespread applicability of materials with new functionalities and their marketing requires also efforts towards the creation and implementation of technical standards and measurement techniques. Standardization is an important stage in the development of any new material and it is based on the consensus of stakeholders including end users, businesses, standards organizations and governments. The main function of standards is to define the qualities and technical properties of a material to ensure consistency across different manufacturers and industries. It is important to assure that a product is genuine, safe and will perform in the way it is expected. For new materials standardization will also enable easier communication between producers and consumers. In this context, the current paper shows the activities performed within MASTRO Project – H2020, focusing on the possible strategies to reach the standardization of innovative materials in aeronautic field. In MASTRO Project self-healing, de-icing, self-sensing and self-curing materials, obtained using nanocomposite technologies, have been widely studied and tested to understand their usability in a significant environment. The purpose of the standardization activity in MASTRO project is to explore the possibility of transferring the results of research into one or more standards. The first step is to understand the research results which have not necessarily a need to be transposed into standards, and those that potentially will provide valuable support to new or existing standards through, for example, the validation of test methods or product and /or process. The second part of this activity was the identification of needs and opportunities for standardization in the eventuality partners have developed specific procedure or protocol to overcome particular issues, which were not reported in literature. Generally, in this process the applicability of the possible standard to other bodies (research groups both academic and from industries) was considered. The use of some innovative functionalities developed in MASTRO project, such as those related to self-healing materials, has not been yet regulated with any of the available standards. For these materials, standardization need and opportunities have been identified in order to enable their widespread use. The preparation of a New Work Item Proposal on this kind of functionalities (with all relevant documentation that can help for the procedure) is in progress. Figure 1 shows the followed approach and the applied strategy to rationalize data regarding available standard, standard needs and opportunities of the developed materials for the evaluation of possible Standardization Processes. The used algorithm for the rationalization of the information is based on the readiness level of the technology and on the relevance to improve the safety of the material.