BSA – Breakthrough steels and applications

August 11, 2016

Program management: Markku Heino, Vilja Vara, Spinverse Oy
Contact: markku.heino@spinverse.com, vilja.vara@spinverse.com

Schedule: 2014-2017
Size: ca 46M€

Results: http://hightech.dimecc.com/
Final report of DIMECC BSA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Being based on easily extracted iron, steel provides both environmentally and economically the best material solutions for a plethora of applications. Steel is and will continue to be one of the main building blocks of sustainable society. At the moment, Finland is among world innovation leaders in novel steel technologies and products. The Finnish steel knowledge and research infrastructure is exceptionally strong.

Operating in a rapidly changing global market requires new thinking and new kind of risk taking capabilities. The climate challenge, ever-increasing demand for cost and resource efficiency, and new and harsher application environments call for innovative business solutions based on new materials and material combinations. This requires a major renovation program in design and manufacturing industries as well as in teaching and research institutions.

The overall goal of the Breakthrough Steels and Applications (BSA) program is to enable a renewal of the Finnish metal and engineering industries through major improvements in their offerings and global competitiveness brought about by the intelligent use of novel advanced steel products. Key emphasis is on end-users in selected business areas: bioenergy, power generation, mining, lifting, handling and transport, offshore and marine, waste recycling, arctic technologies and processing industry.

The program is built around the entire steel value chain. The consortium includes 31 companies in the metals and engineering industry, with a wide range of applications, steel producers and foundries, as well as 7 multidisciplinary research organisations with high-level international partners. The program aims at:

Optimizing life-cycle efficiency and sustainability of steel-based solutions by removing barriers to the efficient application of latest developments
Developing a completely new generation of steel and cast material concepts from both an economic and environmental point of view
Building world-class competence and digital tools for the design of next decade’s products.

The BSA program consists of four projects:

P1: Material challenges from emerging processes and applications – solving challenges set by new technologies
P2: Design beyond present codes – enabling efficient utilization of new materials
P3: Novel steel concepts – enabling sustainable solutions
P4: Fundamentals and modelling (FunMode) – cross-cutting

Projects 1 and 2 are industry-driven and based on critical future needs of steel end-users (market pull). Project 3, in turn, is based on recent trends in materials research and development (technology push). Project 4 is a new instrument in DIMECC research programs, aimed at significantly strengthening the scientific base by taking advantage of the most recent scientific knowhow, methods and computational tools for material multi-scale modelling and simulation. It is a cross-cutting element, linking all of the projects in this program together and building a solid scientific knowledge platform of deep fundamental understanding of steel material processing, structures, properties and performance. Another result will be a toolbox of computational modelling and simulation tools for material design and optimization. The critical mass is guaranteed by gathering together a highly multi-disciplinary group of researchers (12 doctoral theses, their senior advisors & international partners) working on challenging research topics.

The BSA program is linked and will be run in close cooperation with another DIMECC materials program HYBRIDS (Hybrid Materials). The HYBRIDS program also includes a FunMode project, offering a platform for joint research work, mentoring and collaboration. DIMECC BSA and HYBRIDS programs run together the DIMECC Breakthrough Materials Doctoral School where more than 30 Doctoral students coached by their professors, senior advisors, and international research partners use latest science and especially multi-scale modelling to solve the critical research problems set by the companies. Read more about the DIMECC Breakthrough Materials Doctoral School.

General BSA program presentation

BSA in SEED research library: http://www.seedresearchlibrary.com/SEEDHTML/player.php

READ MORE ABOUT BSA

BSA IN MEDIA 2017