RheoMaTe Public Webinar on March 17th 2026
Partly republished from VTT. You can find the full length news here.
VTT leads a Business Finland Co-Innovation project RheoMaTe that aims to improve the processing of fiber-based biomaterials e.g. for eco-friendly packaging, textiles, and composites. The project tackles the complexity of these materials with improved measurement tools, AI models, and simulations to improve their processability, increase production efficiency, and support greener solutions.
Wood fibers can substitute non-renewable, fossil-based materials in various applications e.g. in packaging, textiles and construction industries. However, resource-efficient manufacturing of sustainable fiber-based products is often limited by the poor processability of fiber materials at high solids content. Rheology – the study of the deformation and flow of matter – provides means to investigate the limits of material processability and to push these limits further.
In the RheoMaTe (Rheology for Sustainable Manufacturing Technologies) project, VTT collaborates with industrial partners to address these processability challenges by developing new measurement and analysis tools for industrial use. The RheoMaTe project is part of Valmet’s Beyond Circularity ecosystem and it collaborates with Mirka’s SHAPE ecosystem. This two-year project started in March 2025.
The RheoMaTe project is expected to widely enhance the competitiveness of Finnish processing and manufacturing industries through new knowledge and measurement techniques. In particular, the project results are anticipated to accelerate the renewal of the forest industry and improve its resource efficiency. Additionally, the RheoMaTe project supports the growth of Finnish measurement device manufacturers in the field of rheology and process instrumentation, as well as the simulation and modelling capabilities in the area of computational fluid dynamics.
“At Mirka we are aiming to use more bio-based resins in our future products. Therefore, understanding the rheological properties of new bio-based resin systems is of great importance in our future development. The RheoMaTe project allows us to advance our understanding of how to process new biobased materials in our production facilities”, notes Simon Sandén, Development Engineer at Mirka Oy.
Public webinar on March 17th, 2026
Some highlights from the first year of the RheoMaTe project will be presented at a public Teams webinar on Tuesday, March 17th. The webinar will also feature a keynote talk from Professor Mikko Alava (Aalto University) on the topic “Bayesian methods in rheology of complex fluids”.
“The webinar gives us a great opportunity to disseminate the goals of the project and selected results to the wider public. We expect that the webinar will be attended by a great number of academic researchers as well as industrial practitioners with an interest in rheology, fiber-based materials and machine learning”, concludes Olli-Ville Laukkanen.
Register to the RheoMaTe public webinar here.