MANUFACTURING AND TESTING OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS AND STRUCTURES. EUROPEAN COOPERATIVE RESEARCH EXAMPLES 1 K. Friedrich, M. Maier, and M. Neitzel Keywords: liquid crystal polymers, tribology, crash, thermoforming, resin transfer molding, aluminum foam, melt impregnation This article describes several European cooperative research examples in the field of polymer composite materials. The projects, which were carried out in collaboration between industrial and academic partners, were all sup- ported by the European Union. They deal, e.g., with (a) the manufacturing and crash testing of thermoplastic com- posite structures, (b) the production of thermoplastic composite preforms, and (c) the energy absorption behavior of aluminum foams, and other interesting subjects. 1. Introduction The use of polymeric composite materials for various industrial applications has grown in Europe continuously over the last 10 years. One important reason for this is the enormous research efforts that undertaken in many European countries under the support of various research programs of the European Union. The most important one of these programs is called BRITE/EURAM, of which the second acronym is an abbreviation for European Research on Advanced Materials. This program has two subgroups, of which the “Basic Research in Industrial Technology” is the most important one. Here, funding of proposals is possible only if a research consortium is formed which consists of at least 50% industrial partners, the rest being research centers or university insti- tutes. Under the second subgroup, entitled “Thematic Networks,” special expert circles can be established that consist of individual researchers coming from various research institutes and industries across Europe. Their aims are to explore special topics which are of general, high scientific interest for the development of new materials and their performance in various industrial applications. The program CRAFT has been established especially to support small and medium sized enterprises in their efforts to develop new materials and products. Here, the majority of partners working together in a particular development project must come from indus- tries of different European countries, whereas only a few research institutes can be incorporated. The purpose of the program INCO-COPERNICUS is to support the existing research activities at institutes or universities of Eastern European countries. Also here, research on advanced materials is a core issue. As a rule, the majority of partners must come from Eastern Europe, and the co- ordination of the project must be in the hands of a partner from a country of the European Union. Two other programs should also be mentioned in this respect: 1) Training and mobility of researchers (TMR), which was mainly established to allow younger scientists to work tempo- rarily in a research laboratory of a different country, and 2) integrated manufacturing systems (IMS), a newly launched program similar to BRITE/EURAM, but especially allow- ing us to incorporate research groups from North America and Japan, who, however, have to allocate their funding from their own countries. 429 1 Presented at the 11th International Conference on Mechanics of Composite Materials (Riga, June 11-15, 2000). 0191-5665/00/3606-0429$25.00 Copyright 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation Institute for Composite Materials Ltd. (IVW) University of Kaiserslautern, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany. Published in Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 36, No. 6, pp. 719-732 , September-October, 2000. Original article submitted July 6, 2000. Mechanics of Composite Materials, Vol. 36, No. 6, 2000