News from the IOB

The IOB at the AMAP Forum 2024

The 25th and 26th of April our col­le­agues Katha­ri­na Roth­höft, Moritz Eick­hoff, Chris­ti­an Schwot­zer, Andrés Ramí­rez Sán­chez and pro­fes­sor Her­bert Pfei­fer joi­n­ed the AMAP col­lo­qui­um in Aachen which was orga­ni­zed by Advan­ced Metals and Pro­ces­ses rese­arch clus­ter. This asso­cia­ti­on of com­pa­nies and insti­tu­tes repres­ents rese­arch focus on alu­mi­ni­um at RWTH Aachen Uni­ver­si­ty with part­ners from the ent­rie alu­mi­ni­um value chain, inclu­ding rese­arch, indus­try, sup­pli­ers and associations.The main focus is sta­ted on mate­ri­al deve­lo­p­ment, pro­duc­tion tech­no­lo­gy, model­ling, simu­la­ti­on and metall­ur­gi­cal pro­ces­ses. At this event, our col­le­agues Chris­ti­an and Moritz gave a pre­sen­ta­ti­on on the decar­bo­niza­ti­on of alu­mi­ni­um indus­try and model­ling of alu­mi­ni­um pro­ces­ses, respec­tively, which lead to a very inte­res­t­ing dis­cus­sion throug­hout this event.

Figure 1: Academic and industrial partners belonging to AMAP Forum

During the­se two days fo the event, rese­arch and indus­try enti­ties from the alu­mi­ni­um sec­tor met in order to dis­cuss cur­rent chal­lenges and trends in this indus­try. Initi­al­ly, after an intro­duc­tion from the AMAP chair­man, the event star­ted with a very inte­res­t­ing topics of decar­bo­niza­ti­on, regu­la­ti­on and trends on the alu­mi­ni­um mar­ket pre­sen­ted by Alu­mi­ni­um Deutsch­land, Alu­mi­ni­um Duf­fel and Bos­ton Con­sul­ting Group suc­ces­si­ve­ly. Then, a sub­se­quent panel dis­cus­sion about the topics shown in the afo­re­men­tio­ned pre­sen­ta­ti­on was done.

After a short bra­ke,  the alu­mi­ni­um and melt tre­at­ment ses­si­on star­ted. In this part, the part­ners from Toyo­ta, Fose­co, Wei­qiao, IME explai­ned dif­fe­rent tech­ni­ques, chal­lenges, results and ana­ly­sis appli­ed to mol­ten alu­mi­ni­um. In order to finish the first day, it began the sus­taina­bi­li­ty ses­si­on in which our col­le­ague Chris­ti­an Schwot­zer pre­sen­ted his stu­dy about decar­bo­niza­ti­on of alu­mi­ni­um remel­ting pro­ces­ses focu­sed on a tech­noe­co­no­mic over­view on fuel tran­si­ti­on and flexibilization.

During the second day, pre­sen­ta­ti­ons regar­ding pro­duc­tion tech­no­lo­gy were shown. First of all, the rese­arch insti­tu­te IBF pre­sen­ted a pro­ject on alu­mi­ni­um sheet forming in the auto­mo­ti­ve indus­try, fol­lo­wed by a case stu­dy on mea­su­re­ments in sur­face rough­ness and oil film thic­k­ness by AMEPA Gmbh. Then the GI and Nemak explai­ned respec­tively the imple­men­ta­ti­on of addi­ti­ve manu­fac­tu­ring of inserts and indus­tri­al cases on melt cleanliness.

After a short bra­ke the digi­ta­liza­ti­on and model­ling part star­ted with pre­sen­ta­ti­ons from IBF and Mag­ma. Also, our col­le­ague Moritz Eick­hoff tal­ked about phy­si­cal and nume­ri­cal simu­la­ti­on of alu­mi­ni­um mel­ting using water bubbles. Then, In order to finish this mee­ting, a quiz regar­ding alu­mi­ni­um was done.