Invited Resource Only Strategic Equipment bid for Rapid Alloy Processing

为了具有全球竞争力，英国钢铁行业必须通过提供更好的产品(更高的强度、更低的成本、更好的成形性等)来迅速响应日益增长的钢铁需求(在英国，预计到2030年，这一需求将从2018年的38亿GB增长到60亿GB)。目前新产品和工艺开发的交付期太长，无法抓住新的市场机会，开发成本很高，因为全面试验往往需要生产100‘S吨产品，但无法销售。有必要通过利用钢铁公司内部和外部的小规模发展方案和创新思维来加快这一发展。在WMG的高级钢铁研究中心(ASRC)开发了一种快速合金加工(RAP)设施，包括铸造(1-7公斤)、热轧和冷轧、热处理、机械和微观结构表征，以及研究加工性问题的定制系统。通过RAP设施生产的许多钢种已经根据工业生产和性能进行了基准测试，以确保工艺的健壮性。RAP设施是对现有非常小的实验室规模(10-100‘S克)新合金生产的补充，无论是通过试验性组合制造工艺还是计算合金设计工艺，它提供了一个机会，在投入昂贵的中试和生产试验之前，可以进行更具代表性的规模加工，并以一种经常被忽视的方式探索经常被忽视的可加工性问题。因此，RAP设施是发展新思维和将新概念转化为实际利益的推动者。它被用来支持ASRC的内部研究项目，以及越来越多的与大学、工业和中小企业的外部活动。这项提议将资助一名全职技术员在RAP设施上工作，以支持研究和工业/商业用途；这是必要的，因为一些设备需要两个人来操作(例如热轧)，而铁水加工的专业性意味着需要一名训练有素的操作员来满足外部要求。使用该设施的增长将产生收入，这将使我们能够可持续地为继续支持用户和提供高质量结果的职位提供资金。

To be globally competitive the UK steel industry must rapidly respond to the increasing demand for steel (in the UK this is expected to grow to £6.0bn by 2030, from £3.8bn in 2018) by supplying improved products (higher strength, lower cost, improved formability etc). Current lead times for new product and process development are far too long to enable capture of new market opportunities, with high development costs as full trials can often require 100's tonnes production that are not sold. There is a need to accelerate this development via the use of small-scale development programmes and innovative thinking both within and external to the steel companies. A rapid alloy processing (RAP) facility has been developed at the Advanced Steel Research Centre (ASRC) in WMG, that comprises casting (1 - 7 kg), hot and cold rolling, heat treatment, mechanical and microstructural characterisation, along with bespoke systems to investigate processability issues. A number of steel grades produced via the RAP facility have been benchmarked against industrial production and properties to ensure robustness of the process. The RAP facility compliments existing very small lab scale (10-100's grams) production of new alloys, either by experimental combinatorial fabrication or computational alloy design processes, by providing an opportunity to carry out more representative scale processing and explore often overlooked issues of processability in a rapid manner before committing to expensive pilot plant and production trials. The RAP facility is therefore an enabler to developing new thinking and translating novel concepts to practical benefit. It is being used to support internal research projects in the ASRC and a growing number of external activities with universities, industries and SMEs. This proposal is to fund a full time technician to work on the RAP facility to support research and industry / business use; this is required as some equipment needs two people to operate (for example hot rolling) and the specialist nature of hot metal processing means that a trained operator is necessary to deliver external requests. Growth in use of the facility will generate income which will allow us to sustainably fund the position to continue to support users and deliver quality results.