Clemens Dransfeld Awarded NWO KIC Defence Grant

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Professor Clemens Dransfeld and his collaborators have received funding through the NWO KIC call High Performance Materials for Defence and Security for the project Welding Made Easy: Tunable Magnetic Materials for Decentralised Manufacturing and Repair of Hybrid Composites.

The project aims to make the joining and repair of advanced lightweight composites more controllable and less dependent on extensive machinery. The team will develop a programmable joining layer in which magnetic nanoparticles generate heat when exposed to a high-frequency magnetic field.

By tuning the nanoparticles to the processing temperature of the thermoplastic, the material can limit its own heating once the target temperature is reached. The nanoparticles can also provide feedback about the processing conditions, enabling in-situ temperature monitoring during bonding.

This approach could support robust, energy-efficient fusion bonding for decentralised production and repair of polymer composites used in aerospace, defence, safety, wind-energy, and automotive applications.

Clemens Dransfeld is working with co-applicants Professor Arjan Houtepen of TU Delft, Dr. Reinoud Lavrijsen of Eindhoven University of Technology, and Professor Sofia Kantorovich of the University of Vienna. The consortium also includes Airbus, GKN, Toray, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), SCIL Nanoimprint, and SABIC.

The project is one of the successful proposals in an NWO programme awarding more than EUR 15 million for high-performance materials research, supplemented by EUR 4 million in co-funding from participating companies and organisations.

Read the original TU Delft announcement.

Induction Welding | Dransfeld Group

Clemens Dransfeld Awarded NWO KIC Defence Grant