Functionalities of Shape Memory Alloys combined with Advantages of Textiles into the AVALON Project providing a Framework for the Creation of High Added-Value Networks

This paper presents the EC-funded project AVALON, focussing on exploiting advantages provided by textiles, such as flexibility, light weight, low cost and high surface coverage, and combining those advantages with functionalities offered by SMAs towards the development of new industrial applications, opening up new perspectives in the highly competitive global textile industry, as well as for the market of Shape Memory Alloys. SMAs offer in fact a range of application perspectives, which could be more effectively and cost-efficiently exploited through the aid of textile architectures integrating thin and ultrathin SMA wires. Within this framework, applied research activities in AVALON are organized in networks, called Target Product Groups, with companies involved in many different types of businesses within the textile industry as well as within other manufacturing industries close to the application markets, pursuing the cooperative development of various new products applying hybrid textiles integrating SMA wires. As such, cross-sectoral industrial networking enables members of such networks to combine their complementary competencies and share specialised knowledge towards new product development. As such, the project aims to develop fundamental understanding on the behaviour of these materials, both when integrated within textile architectures and during textile processing, which is the key to develop performing products fully exploiting advantages provided by SMAs. This is achieved by integrating both the experience coupled with trial and error approaches typical of textile companies, with the expertise of excellent research centres on Shape Memory Alloys.