The European industry is currently a world leader in aviation and to maintain its leading position and competitiveness in the dynamic global market, Europe’s industry must develop quickly and efficiently high quality products by meeting time-critical market demands and customers’ needs. Industrial competition is becoming fiercer not only from established regions, such as the USA, but from new emerging challengers, such as Brazil, Canada, etc.

Technological leadership and innovation is becoming the major competitive differentiator, most notably in terms of costs, and environmental performance. The market demands shorter cycles of new technology integration and, on the other hand, competitors enter the market with aggressive prices.

It is forecasted that in 2050, innovative products and services demanded by the market will be based on state of the art design, manufacturing and certification processes with a significant reduction of the environmental impact. Recent studies have shown that the development and deployment of new structural technologies will have the greatest impact in the reduction of weight and operational costs compared to other technologies. Against this background, composite materials technology is of fundamental importance to current and future aircraft structures where high specific properties and integration of multiple functionalities are essential to improve weight, fuel efficiency, reduce CO2 emissions, and certification costs. The vulnerability of composite structures to localised, dynamic, sudden, and unexpected loads, may result in unpredictable complex localized damage and a loss of post-impact residual strength.

The aim of the EXTREME project is to develop novel material characterisation methods and in-situ measurement techniques, material models and simulation methods for the design and manufacture aerospace composite structures under EXTREME dynamic loadings leading to a significant reduction of weight, design and certification cost.