The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish government through the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under the contracts DPI2012-34465 and MAT2012-37552-C03-03, which is partially funded by the FEDER funds of the EC. The first author acknowledges the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya with the pre-doctoral grant FI-DGR (2014FI B1 00123). The company CHOMARAT (Ardèche, France) is acknowledged for providing the NCF material and Aldila (Poway, California, USA) for the epoxy system pre-preg. The company AIRBUS partially funded this work through the 2genCOMP project