Tailor-made high-performance steels
Coordinator Prof. dr. ir. J. Sietsma, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
The aim of this research theme is to acquire a deeper understanding of the metallurgical processes that occur during the production of steel and steel-based materials. Steel is by far the most flexible of all metals, which means that it has a very wide range of properties and applications. However, this flexibility also implies that these properties are highly sensitive to the conditions of the production process. A deeper understanding of the metallurgical and physical background of steel production is needed, then, if we are to optimize and control process conditions adequately. Implementing this fundamental knowledge will enable us to make the production process more efficient and make products more consistent.
The long-term objective is to develop ‘new’ families of materials with high strength, improved formability and better resistance to corrosion. This is expected to involve more complex multi-phase materials. Important applications are new high-strength grades of steel with improved weldability (for the automotive sector), corrosion-resistant high-strength steel alloys for landing gears, new steel grades for use in long-distance sour-gas-resistant pipelines, and light-weight steel constructions for the civil industry.
Examples of research projects in this cluster are:
• Texture-controlled processing of dual-phase steels
• Fundamentals of X-ray diffraction analysis on bearing steel
• Predicting the physical and chemical properties of burden materials in the cohesive zone of the iron-making blast furnace
• Designing highly formable and ultra-strong alloys through Plasticity-Induced Transformations in Titanium alloys (PiTTi)
• Micro structural control of the stability of individual austenite grains in TRIP steel
• Employing mathematical and physical concepts to build 3D microstructure models on the basis of well-accessible 2D experiments
