Designing alloys for resource efficiency (DARE)- a manufacturing approach

制造和加工金属以形成部件是最大的工业部门之一，占所有制造业价值的46%，每年为欧洲经济局带来1.3万亿欧元的经济价值。物质安全关乎获得原材料，以确保军事和经济上的充足。我们将面临未来的重大挑战，因为关键要素将日益短缺，从而导致价格波动(“定时炸弹”)。同样，许多材料依赖于供应得不到保证的战略元素，稀土元素是主要的例子(对镁合金的性能至关重要)。金属生产消耗的能源约占全球能源消耗的5%，每年排放的二氧化碳超过2G吨，因此生产效率可以显著减少对环境的影响。TSB最近的报告《材料安全：确保英国经济的资源可获得性》指出，“由于一些原材料的短期可获得性有限，原材料价格普遍大幅上涨，寡头垄断的行业结构，以及依赖少数几个有时政治不稳定的国家作为关键材料来源，材料安全的重要性有所增加”。此外，“可持续性问题在国家和国际议程上获得了前所未有的突出地位，前所未有地占据了企业和政府的头脑……资源效率在缓解资源枯竭、环境影响和材料安全等更广泛的问题方面发挥着关键作用，它也对低碳经济做出了重大贡献。”要解决金属生产和使用中的资源效率问题，需要专门开发新的金属合金，以减少对战略元素和稀缺元素的依赖，进行回收利用，并采用将浪费降至最低的颠覆性制造技术。问题的规模太大，传统的矩阵实验无法进行。相反，需要将各种最先进的建模、实验和加工技能结合在一起，以提高金属系统的资源效率。在DARE方法中，我们使用基础科学来了解具有战略重要性的元素的作用，以更高的资源效率设计新合金，并优化新合金的加工路线以实现供应链压缩。DARE方法的独特之处在于将制造纳入合金设计范例的中心。合并后的主题将涉及主要的金属合金，包括超高强度、低合金和纳米结构钢(例如，以一种资源高效的方法实现车辆轻量化，以减少汽车排放)；钛合金和钛铝化物(例如，用于航空航天应用)和镁合金(例如，在汽车和军事应用，例如，铸造变速箱外壳)。研究团队和他们的十个产业合作伙伴将把实际的材料和实施送到产业中，将资源效率议程从政策领域转移到实体经济领域。我们将通过开发和利用DARE合金设计方法来支持高价值英国特殊金属制造业的增长，该方法可以提高资源效率和灵活性，应对英国制造业经济中不断变化的材料供应，解决EPSRC过渡到低碳社会的重大挑战。这将有助于英国现有的世界领先行业扩大规模，为未来制造产品。

The manufacturing and processing of metals to form components is one of the largest industrial sectors and accounts for 46% of all manufactured value, with an economic value to the EEA of Euro 1.3 trillion annually. Material security concerns the access to raw materials to ensure military and economic sufficiency. We will face major future challenges as key elements will be increasingly in short supply with consequent price volatility ("the ticking time bomb"). Equally, many materials rely on strategic elements for which supply is not guaranteed, with rare earth elements being the prime example (central to the performance of magnesium alloys). Metals production consumes about 5% of global energy use and is responsible for an annual emission of over 2Gton of CO2, so efficiency in manufacture can produce significant reductions in environmental impact. The recent report "Material Security: Ensuring resource availability for the UK economy" from the TSB noted "the importance of material security has increased due to limited short-term availability of some raw materials, widespread large increases in raw material prices, oligopolistic industry structures and dependence on a limited number of sometimes politically unstable countries as sources of key materials". Furthermore, "The issue of sustainability has attained unprecedented prominence on both national and international agendas, occupying the minds of businesses and governments as never before... Resource efficiency has a key role to play in mitigating wider issues such as depletion of resources, environmental impact and materials security, and it also contributes significantly to the low-carbon economy."Addressing resource efficiency in metals production and use requires that new metal alloys be developed specifically to reduce reliance on strategic and scarce elements, for recycling and for disruptive manufacturing technologies that minimise waste. The size of the problem is too large to be undertaken by the traditional matrix experiment. Rather, a wide range of state-of-the-art modelling, experimental and processing skills needs to be brought together to target resource efficiency in metallic systems. In the DARE approach we use basic science to come to an understanding of the role of strategically important elements, to design new alloys with greater resource efficiency and to optimise the processing route for the new alloys to give supply chain compression. Unique to the DARE approach is to bring manufacturing into the centre of the alloy design paradigm. The combined themes will tackle key metal alloys, including ultra-high strength, low alloy and nanostructured steel (e.g. for a resource efficient approach to vehicle light weighting to give reduced automotive emissions); titanium alloys and titanium aluminides (e.g. for aerospace applications) and Mg alloys (e.g. in automotive and military applications, for example, cast gear box casings). The research team and their ten industrial partners will deliver actual materials and implementation into industry, moving the resource efficiency agenda from the sphere of policy into the real economy. We will support the growth of the high-value UK speciality metals manufacturing industry by developing and exploiting the DARE approach to the design of alloys that improve the resource efficiency and flexibility with regard to fluctuating material availability of the UK manufacturing economy, addressing the EPSRC grand challenges in transitioning to a low-carbon society. This will help existing UK world-leading industries to expand and manufacture for the future.