Engineering news
Innovative technologies to make automotive components up to 40% lighter and completely recyclable will be tested under industry conditions as Brunel University London opens its on campus car component research facility – the Advanced Metal Casting Centre (AMCC).
The £17 million, 1500 metre squared research facility, is focused on developing lightweight, high-performance aluminium alloys for the automotive and rail industries, and will include fabrication and testing of aluminium automotive structural components.
The facility is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Innovate UK, global aluminium component producer Constellium and Jaguar Land Rover, and is equipped with a a commercial 1600 tonne locking force high pressure die caster for aluminium and magnesium alloys, as well as other technologies such as a scaled-up twin roll caster incorporating Brunel’s novel melt conditioning technology.
By validating techniques using industry-standard equipment, the university says the research facility should be able to bridge the so-called ‘valley of death’ between lab-scale success and mainstream factory floor implementation.
The primary aim is to scale up from fundamental research carried out in the Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Techniques (BCAST) and the Liquid Metal Engineering Centre (LiME) under professor Zhongyun Fan. The team have demonstrated how it is possible to condition molten aluminium alloys to produce castings with a much finer grain structure so car components can be made up to 40% lighter.
The same techniques also hold out significant promise in making mixed aluminium alloys scrap a suitable material for high quality castings. Currently such scrap is difficult or impossible to recycle to a high enough quality for re-use in automotive manufacturing.
The AMCC will officially open on Thursday 7th April and Brunel’s vice chancellor and president, professor Julia Buckingham announced work will shortly begin on a second facility at the Advanced Metal Processing Centre so that a broader range of components can be produced and tested against current practice.
Once operational they will form, along with Constellium’s University Technology Centre at Brunel, the National Metals Research Park to broaden the end customer base to include aerospace, rail and other engineering industries.
Buckingham said: “Professor Fan and his team are at the forefront of research which holds the promise of cars which are not only significantly lighter and so more fuel-efficient but which at the end of their useful working life can be recycled much more easily into new ones.
Jaguar Land Rover’s director of research and technology, Dr Wolfgang Epple, said: “The Advanced Metal Casting Centre (AMCC) at Brunel’s Uxbridge Campus will provide Jaguar Land Rover’s engineers with a facility to create and develop the new lightweight alloys and technologies of the future.
“As well as supporting collaborative research, the findings from the AMCC will develop and test breakthrough advanced lightweight technologies and develop the skills across the automotive industry, academia and the supply chain.”