Objective
European commercial industries need the development of lighter components with improved characteristics and easy recyclability for the next future, in order to develop more effficient products with reduced pollutant emmisions, at low cost. In this way, the industrial aim of the present project is to obtain low cost components with improved properties in the needed areas. In order to reach this goal, a suitable production process for the manufacturing of aluminium based components locally reinforced with composite inserts, in the zones where an improvement of some properties is required, will be developed. Two different types of composite inserts will be used for this purpose: inserts made of commercial discontinuous metal matrix composites (MMCs) ingots, formed by gravity casting into the desired shape, and porous preforms made of low cost discontinuous reinforcements such as alumina short fibers, graphite particles or others. Two high productivity casting techniques have been previously selected as the most interesting: Low pressure casting and High pressure die casting, which are traditionally and widely employed for the manufacturing of several industrial components in commercial sectors, specially in the automotive one. The use of local composite reinforcements with the casting techniques selected will allow to manufacture lighter components (saving weight of 50% over cast iron) with improved properties in the required areas, at a low price in comparison with the same components fully made of a MMC (a fully made composite component cost is 2.5 times the cost of the aluminium one). The final cost will not be higher than 1.2 times the price of the same aluminium component. Moreover, the cost due to the machining will be markedly reduced since only localized small areas will be reinforced with composite inserts. These areas show better mechanical properties at high temperatures, and specially better wear behaviour, among other interesting advantages, which allow to increase the service life to more than 40.000 Km, which is the current practice with cast iron products. The technology considered could also open up an important market of applications for aluminium alloys, since applications which are not presently feasible due to their low mechanical or wear properties compared with steel or cast iron, could be produced with light aluminium alloys partially reinforced with composite inserts. The consortium comprises two aluminium foundries specialized in low pressure casting and high pressure die casting, one car maker, a car components supplier, a company involved in the production of short fiber based components for several applications, a company specialized in the machining of automotive components, and a R&D centre with large experience in the development of MMCs. The Brite-Euram areas covered by this proposal are: Area 2 (2.1.1 .S., 2.1.2.S. 2.1 .3.S. and 2.1 .2.M.).
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology materials engineering fibers
- engineering and technology materials engineering composites
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering manufacturing engineering subtractive manufacturing
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry post-transition metals
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics productivity
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
31160 Orcoyen
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.