Automotive lightweight materials congress returns to Detroit

August 3, 2015
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Annual Global Automotive Lightweight Materials Congress

August 18-20, 2015 – Detroit

This is the largest and most trusted automotive lightweight materials conference, and this years instalment of GALM is scheduled to be the biggest and best ever. The series has been attended by 2000+ attendees across the globe and is returning to Detroit with a 3-day agenda – to share unprecedented detail across composites, joining, forming, and multi-material design.

Building on the successes of GALM events in London, Detroit, and Shanghai this year, this event is fully expected to sell-out, with over 80 attendees and 24 exhibitors already confirmed.

The expert panel of speakers includes:

  • David Wagner, Technical Leader Lightweight Vehicle Design, Ford Motor Co.
  • Surender Maddela, Sr. Research & Development Engineer, Materials Engineering, Nissan Motor Corp.
  • Stephen Logan, Senior Engineering Specialist, Chrysler Group LLC
  • Bhavesh Shah, Senior Advanced Technology Design Release Engineer, General Motors
  • Nir Khan, Director Of Design, Plasan
  • Mark Voss, Engineering Group Manager, Body Advanced Technical Works, General Motors
  • Venkat Aitharaju, Senior Researcher, Polymer Composites, General Motors Global Research and Development
  • Gregg Peterson, Senior Technical Specialist, Lotus Engineering
  • Raymond Boeman, Program Director, Energy Partnerships, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
  • Laurent Chappuis, Technical Expert - Lightweight Stampings, Vehicle Program Engineering – SBU, Ford Motor Co.
  • Glenn Daehn, Mars G. Fontana Professor Of Metallurgical Engineering, Executive Director, Honda Partnership Program

 

With an agenda re-written from scratch and providing a globally respected platform for leading OEMs, material suppliers, joining and forming partners, the 2015 agenda provides new, exclusive content including:

NINE UNIQUE CASE STUDIES ON JOINING: Mitigating corrosion with strong joining for every material combination that can be applied with low cycle times

FORMING METALS: Benchmarking forming methods for magnesium and aluminum to enable adoption into multi-material architectures

EIGHT DEDICATED SESSIONS ON COMPOSITES: From reducing the costs and cycle times of production to design modeling and application success stories

DESIGN AND MATERIAL SELECTION: Selecting the optimal materials across the body, interior and closures to maximize total weight loss across the vehicle

RECYCLING: Analyzing the lifecycle implications for aluminum and carbon-fiber, tackling segmentation and re-use challenges

View a full conference brochure.

 

Automotive lightweight materials congress returns to Detroit

The Annual Global Automotive Lightweight Materials Congress is taking place August 18-20, 2015 in Detroit.

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NIST hosts first app challenge to improve data access

July 30, 2015
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Researchers looking for information on the properties of methane at high temperatures or the isotopic composition of an element know they can rely on standard reference data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Md. But what they really need is an app (or apps) to make the data more accessible.

As a step in that direction, NIST is launching its first app challenge. Prizes totaling $45,000 can go to developers who create applications that offer new ways to access and use data from one or more of six eligible scientific data collections maintained by NIST.

NIST maintains some of the world's most accurate and comprehensive datasets of physical, material, chemical, and biological data covering a broad range of substances and properties. These datasets are invaluable research tools for physicists, biochemical engineers, environmental researchers, students, and many others. The app challenge is meant to boost awareness of these resources and modernize their use. To support the challenge, NIST has made six of its datasets available in machine-readable format. The contest is open to U.S. citizens or permanent residents over the age of 18.

Challenge participants must make the app available for testing at no cost to NIST, and it must be accompanied by a brief text submission, at least one screenshot of the app, and a brief (less than five minute) video describing the functionality of the app. Entries are due by Sept. 28.

NIST experts will vet technical aspects of the apps and a group of judges will evaluate submissions to identify the best. The criteria for judging will be the app's potential impact, its creativity and innovation, how well it is implemented, and the integration of one or more SRD or other data into the app.

The six eligible NIST Standard Reference Datasets to be used in the challenge are:

  • CODATA Fundamental Physical Constants (NIST SRD 121) — provides the most accurate internationally recommended values of the fundamental physical constants that are essential to basic theories of physics and our quantitative understanding of the physical universe.
  • Ground Levels and Ionization Energies for the Neutral Atoms (NIST SRD 111) — primarily used by chemists and astronomers to calculate thermodynamic properties of atoms in chemical reactions and other kinetic processes, and by atomic physicists to benchmark experimental data for advanced atomic theories.
  • Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (NIST SRD 144) — provides atomic weights for elements 1 through 118 and is used by scientists in detecting radioactive isotopes, dating of paintings and sculptures, determining the origins of meteor samples and more.
  • NIST Computational Chemistry Comparison and Benchmark Database (CCCBDB, NIST SRD 101) — provides thermochemical data for a selected set of more than 1000 gas-phase atoms and molecules. It is used by chemists to compare experimental results with computational ideal-gas properties.
  • NIST-JANAF Thermochemical Tables (NIST SRD 13) — originally used by the aerospace industry to understand rocket propellant combustion, these thermochemical data for a range of chemical substances are used world-wide in a range of chemistry, environmental and materials applications. Industry scientists use these tables to predict thermodynamic information about chemical substances, including equilibrium mixtures and heat release.
  • NIST ITS-90 Thermocouple Database (NIST SRD 60) — provides temperature calibration data for converting a measured voltage to temperature, and is the basis for calibration of thermometers, instrument controllers and other devices that rely on temperature for process control. These types of devices are found in virtually every technology including kitchen ovens, hot water heaters, residential and commercial furnaces, power plants, and more.

 

The Reference Data Challenge follows NIST's first participation in the National Day of Civic Hacking, held June 6 in which NIST invited coders from across the U.S. to play with a subset of its Standard Reference Data. The challenge also complements NIST's ongoing efforts to ensure its data and research results are publicly accessible. On July 8, 2015, NIST released a new data access plan and is asking the public for feedback to help guide its policies and procedures.

For detailed information on the NIST Reference Data Challenge, visit nistdata.ChallengePost.com. View the Federal Register notice here.

NIST hosts first app challenge to improve data access

Researchers looking for information on the properties of methane at high temperatures or the isotopic composition of an element know they can rely on standard reference data from NIST.

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Head of Mars Curiosity Rover Mission to speak at ASM’s Megashow

March 26, 2015
Source: ASM International

Head of Mars Curiosity Rover Mission to speak at ASM’s Megashow

SM International, Materials Park, Ohio, announced that Dr. John Grotzinger, chief scientist and head of strategic science planning for NASA’s $2.5 billion Curiosity rover mission to Mars, was selected as the plenary speaker for their co-located show which takes place on May 11-14.

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Metallurgy Europe initiates a 180-company, billion-euro effort to develop advanced metals

September 24, 2014
Source:

The European Space Agency, Paris, has joined forces with other leading research institutions and more than 180 European companies in a billion-euro effort to develop new types of metals and manufacturing techniques. http://phys.org/openx/www/delivery/lg.php?bannerid=12&campaignid=8&zoneid=64&loc=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fphys.org%2Fnews%2F2014-09-europe-age-metals.html&cb=373e918668Known as Metallurgy Europe, the seven-year international program goal is to develop the technical foundations for the discovery of new materials – metallic compounds, alloys, composites, superconductors, and semiconductors. The photo shows a bismuth crystal, such as those used in thermoelectric compounds and special bearing alloys.

The various branches of the metals-related industry today account for 46% of the EU's manufacturing value and 11% of its total Gross Domestic Product – equivalent to $1.7 trillion annually or $4.5 billion daily. Metallurgy Europe is conservatively projected to create at least 100,000 new jobs, based on the ten million people today employed by the metals and end-user industries across the EU plus Switzerland and Norway.

Organized along 13 topics, the potential results include novel heat-resistant alloys for space and nuclear systems, high-efficiency power lines based on superconducting alloys, thermoelectric materials converting waste heat into power, new catalysts for the production of plastics and pharmaceuticals, bio-compatible metals for medical implants, as well as high-strength magnetic systems.

The Metallurgy Europe program is being organized as a 'Cluster' of the EUREKA network. EUREKA is a long-established intergovernmental organization uniting more than 40 governments, including virtually all the member states of the EU.

EUREKA Clusters are long-term, strategically significant public-private partnerships, working with Europe's leading companies to develop competitiveness-boosting technologies.

More than 180 industrial partners have signed up, including some of the largest engineering companies in the continent: Airbus Group, BP, Siemens, Daimler, Rolls-Royce, Thales, AvioAero, BAE Systems, Philips, Ruag, Bombardier, Linde Group, Rolex, Richemont, ArcelorMittal, Sandvik, Bruker, Johnson Matthey, Tata Steel, Boston Scientific, ThyssenKrupp, Outokumpu, Hydro Aluminium and Fiat, along with small and medium firms.

www.esa.int

 

 

Metallurgy Europe initiates a 180-company, billion-euro effort to develop advanced metals

The European Space Agency, Paris, has joined forces with other leading research institutions and more than 180 European companies in a billion-euro effort to develop new types of metals and manufacturing techniques.

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Selective laser melting to produce aerospace components

June 1, 2014
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Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology IPT, Germany, is developing Selective Laser Melting technology to build aerospace components via additive manufacturing. Step by step laser radiation is scanned across a powder bed and traces out the form of the component within this specific layer. Wherever the laser radiation impacts the powder, the powder initially melts and then solidifies to form a solid mass. In this way, the component is built-up layer by layer.

The researchers are now working with their colleagues from the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT on the integration of additive manufacturing into an entire, continuous process chain. To illustrate what the new process chain can achieve, they have produced a Nozzle Guide Vane (NGV) cluster that consists of six double vanes, as shown in the photo.  Previously, the vanes for turbines could only be produced in pairs, as twin blades. Now, they can be installed much more easily and quickly.

An important step toward automation of repair is also under development. Called the "CAx framework," this software approach allows all the various repair technologies to be operated from a single platform. "CA" stands for computer aided,  "x" for the individual technologies of the production. First, the geometric data of damaged or worn-out blade is acquired by digitizing. Second, a milling machine blends out the defect; and third, laser radiation builds up the blade again layer by layer via Laser Material Deposition (LMD). The researchers have already implemented this method for gas turbines; now, they can also transfer it to engine blades.

http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news

 

 

Selective laser melting to produce aerospace components

Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology IPT, Germany, is developing Selective Laser Melting technology to build aerospace components via additive manufacturing.

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Alcoa to build $100 million superalloy plant in La Porte


Source:

Alcoa, Pittsburgh, has broken ground on a new state-of-the-art, $100 million, 320,000-square-foot facility in La Porte, Indiana, where it will produce nickel-base superalloy jet engine parts. The plant will expand Alcoa's reach from structural engine components for business and regional jets, to large commercial aircraft, including narrow- and wide-body and military airplanes. Engines for narrow-body aircraft are among the top selling jet engines in the world.

The plant will increase the company's capacity to supply engines for narrow-body aircraft. It also will enable Alcoa to produce parts nearly 60% larger than components it makes today, expanding its market reach to wide-body airplanes. These components are used in the compression and hot sections of the engine. Alcoa is already the global leader in jet engine airfoils.

Construction of the plant is underway and is expected to be complete by the fourth quarter of 2015. Customer contracts underpin the new capacity. The facility will use the latest in high-tech advanced manufacturing equipment, including digital X-ray for real-time quality assurance, 3D printing of prototypes, blue light technology for more comprehensive dimensional inspection data, and automated casting furnaces with advanced controls to meet precise product specifications.

This is the second major aerospace investment by Alcoa in Indiana in two years. In 2012, Alcoa announced construction of a $90 million greenfield state-of-the-art aluminum lithium facility at its Lafayette operations. The facility is on schedule to open later this year and will be capable of producing upwards of 20,000 metric tons of Alcoa's patented aluminum-lithium alloys used to build dramatically lighter and lower-cost airplanes versus composite alternatives.

www.alcoa.com

 

 

Alcoa to build $100 million superalloy plant in La Porte

Alcoa, Pittsburgh, has broken ground on a new state-of-the-art, $100 million, 320,000-square-foot facility in La Porte, Indiana, where it will produce nickel-base superalloy jet engine parts.

Continue reading