The XIV National Congress on Composite Materials (MATCOMP) was held from 21 to 23 June at the University of Seville’s School of Engineering (ETSI).

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary, ETSI’s Elasticity and Strength of Materials group proposed that the Spanish Association of Composite Materials (AEMAC) should hold this event in Seville, the place where the first MATCOMP congress was held in 1995.

This biannual event was attended by more than 200 participants and involved 134 oral presentations and 28 poster presentations organised into eight thematic areas, with four rooms for parallel oral presentations.

One of the oral presentations at the congress was given by Marta Botana, a researcher in titania’s Internal Development and Innovation area. She gave an oral presentation on the final validation trial of the FAMACOM project. The demonstrator used during this test showed the technical feasibility of microwave curing of composite materials.

Furthermore, Raúl Páez, also a researcher in the R&D area, gave an oral presentation on the QUIRUCOMP project. In it, he explained the method followed for the manufacture of surgical material with thermoplastic matrix composites, as well as the characterisation tests carried out on this instrumentation.

Titania also participated in the poster sessions, with a paper entitled “Non-destructive inspection of welded joints of thermoplastic matrix composites”. In this research, the technical feasibility of using images obtained by C-Scan to infer the quality of ultrasonic welded joints of thermoplastic materials was presented, inferring the result of the G1C test of the joint with a degree of confidence of around 15%.

This edition of MATCOMP highlighted the role of industry in the development of composite materials and debated the new technical and scientific challenges, with the aim of promoting environmental sustainability.