RAPOLAC clustered expertise and resources from 8 participants, including 4 SMEs and 4 universities.
The partners were drawn from 3 member states and one other country (Argentina) and included specialists in the areas of part manufacture (University of Sheffield, Footprint Sheffield), microstructural analysis (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), modelling (SAMTECH, INTEC) and control (Universita degli Studi di Catania), environmental specialists (DIAD) and a management group (METEC).
The SMD cell was operated jointly by the University of Sheffield and by local company Footprint Sheffield. Within the project, material characterisation was carried out by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. A control system was developed by Università degli Studi di Catania and was embedded in the mechanical model of the robot to be developed by SAMTECH. Models of the deposition/solidification process were developed by Intec . A cost/benefit analysis was carried out by DIAD to compare SMD construction to traditional manufacturing routes encouraging take up by SMEs. METEC performed adminastriative and other management tasks.
University of Sheffield
The University of Sheffield is one of the leading research Universities in the UK. All Departments in the Faculty of Engineering were classed as 5 or 5* in the last research assessment exercise (RAE). Research in advanced manufacturing exceeds £20 million and the Dept is partnered with many of the major aerospace companies in the world. It has internationally acknowledged research in developing innovative and advanced technology solutions for materials-forming and metal-working and in the field of composite materials.
The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) in the University of Sheffield acts as co-ordinator of RAPOLAC. The AMRC is a £15M partnership which builds on the shared scientific excellence and technological innovation of a leading aerospace company and the world-class research within the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Engineering. It has internationally acknowledged research in developing innovative and advanced technology solutions for materials-forming and metal working and in the field of composite materials. The AMRC is a tangible example of the ‘knowledge economy’ in action, demonstrating that universities and industry can work together to develop cutting edge research, exploit new technologies and deliver real economic benefits.
Footprint Sheffield
Footprint Sheffield are an SME and the largest hand tool company still manufacturing in the UK. In recent years they have been badly hit by the low labour cost competition from the Far East and they are now looking to diversify into the aerospace market. Footprint have expertise in metal forming and in particular precision tool making, forging and heat treatment. Footprint are keen to commercialise the Shape Metal Deposition process. Footprint have expertise in working in a wide range of materials and will utilise their tool making design and manufacturing expertise in the project.
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
The Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium possesses excellent facilities for characterisation of materials with respect to their microstructure and their mechanical, chemical and physical properties. An extensive listing of instruments and their capabilities is provided on their website.
For RAPOLAC, extensive use will be made of the microstructural analysis equipment. X-ray diffraction analysis and X-ray Fluorescence analysis will give an overview of the phase content of the materials produced and their overall chemical composition. For the latter, standard analytical chemistry techniques are also available. The microstructure will be studied using a range of optical as well as scanning and transmission electron microscopes with associated specimen preparation equipment. These microscopes can be linked with a quantitative image analysis system for a quantitative assessment of phase content. Two microprobes are available for quantitative local chemical analysis but most scanning electron microscopes also have a facility for at least a more qualitative assessment of local chemical composition.
For surface roughness characterization a range of techniques are available involving contact (stylus techniques), non-contacting optical techniques as well as an atomic force microscope for nanometre level resolution. Materials and components can also be examined non-destructively using computer tomography and ultrasonic and acoustic techniques. Mechanical properties can be evaluated on the nano- and micron scale through instrumented indentation testing (determination of local stiffness and hardness/strength). For macroscopic mechanical properties a range of static (Instron) and dynamic (Schenck, MTS) testing machines are available. Static and fatigue tests are possible at ambient and elevated temperature and under uni-axial and multi-axial loading conditions. For residual stress measurements a dedicated X-ray diffractometer (Seifert goniometer) is used.
SAMTECH
Founded in 1986 from the Aerospace Laboratory of University of Liège, SAMTECH is the European engineering software editor developing and marketing the general-purpose Finite Element Analysis code SAMCEF and the Multi-Disciplinary Optimization platform BOSS quattro.
SAMTECH provides integrated general-purpose software products for classical linear FE structure Analysis but also for coupled non-linear structure and multi-body dynamics problems (SAMCEF Mecano). These core engineering software tools answer to a wide range of industrial needs from the preliminary phases of design to the most advanced verification analyses. The software technology of SAMTECH has an unsurpassed reputation for its quality and reliability. It has been adopted by many major companies across all engineering disciplines in particular in the aerospace sector as an integral part of their design process. Important references in the European aeronautical sector are AIRBUS, SNECMA, EADS, EUROCOPTER, SONACA, SABCA, TECHSPACEAERO, ALENIA, AERMACCHI, AVIO, ...
Within the RAPOLAC project, SAMTECH is interested in working on numerical software development, in particular on the use and modification of its commercial engineering software environment SAMCEF and/or BOSS quattro in order to address the global modelling of the robot performing the welding process. SAMTECH envisages to contribute as specialist in integrated coupled mechanism-structure modelling methodology in order to make advanced models available to describe more precisely the mechanical behaviour of the robot interacting with its controller during the welding process and to be able, in particular, to compare the numerical results with real data.
INTEC
INTEC is a research institute of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Santa Fe, Argentina, founded in 1975. The institute has nearly 240 people working in areas of Computational Mechanics, Chemical Engineering, Physics and Applied Mathematics. The CIMEC is the Centre for Computational Methods in Engineering that depends on INTEC. It is formed by nearly 30 people working in Computational Mechanics.
Over the last 25 years, researchers from CIMEC have worked in the development and application of numerical methods and computational tools to problems in several areas: modelling of mechanisms (in close collaboration with SAMTECH), nonlinear mechanics and continuous casting, parallel computations, biomechanics, fluid mechanics, etc.
The Centre supports the PhD studies in Universidad Nacional del Litoral, where its professors teach several courses and guide research activities of PhD students. The Centre has developed strong links with the Argentinean industry. In particular, it has developed projects with SIDERCA (manufacturer of steel tubes for petroleum industry), CNEA (national organism of atomic energy), IMPSA (manufacturer of turbines), SIEMENS (transport division), FAVOT (agricultural machines), EDIVAL (motorvalves manufacturer) among others. Recent RTD agreements between the EU and Argentina enable INTECs participation in RAPOLAC.
Within the RAPOLAC project, INTEC is interested in working on numerical software development, in particular in its finite elements software OOFELIE with functionalities for nonlinear thermomechanics processes. This code is being sold in Europe by the company Open Engineering, which owns the commercialization rights. We have developed the code to model continuous casting processes and heat treatment, and we are currently developing capabilities for modelling welding processes with computation of residual stresses. Also, we are introducing the possibilities for predicting microstructure evolution.
INTEC will contribute to RAPOLAC as specialist in nonlinear thermomechanical coupled modelling methods in order to predict temperatures and material properties evolution during metal deposition in the SMD process, so as to be able to analyze the influence of various parameters of the process on the final product. INTEC will exploit results of this project in R&D activities and in education. The achievement of the RAPOLAC project objectives will allow acquiring new capabilities for modelling complex nonlinear thermomechanical problems of utility in several industries. Also, results from this project will be useful at various courses that INTEC provides to university students and also to engineers from industry.
DIAD
DIAD is a privately owned Italian SME. The company was born in 1987 starting from the collection and treatment of exhausted oils, in virtue of the sensitivity of the founder partners towards the environmental problems and the good quality of the human life. In 2001 it was founded the DIAD R&D Department whose actions were finalised to integrate the above research lines in European/National funded projects. The R&D Dept. is very active towards all those themes aiming to the quality control of the products, the development of eco-compatible manufacturing processes and advanced recycling techniques, the development of advanced systems for the treatment of industrial discards using clean energy. The objectives of the department have been successfully achieved in the Sixth Framework programme. All the projects successfully evaluated and the future proposal in preparation fit into three main macro-projects in which DIAD have structured its R&D activity areas: Environment Projects, Manufacturing Projects, Material Processing Projects.
DIEES-UNICT
The University of Catania was founded in 1434 and is one of the oldest Universities in Italy. Headed by Prof. Luigi Fortuna, DIEES-UNICT has 30 among full and associate professors, 10 visiting professor, 30 PhD students, 10 among grantees and researchers and 6 employees. The higher education and the research activity are organized in six thematic areas: Automation, Control Systems and Robotics; Electronics; Electrical Systems; Electrical Machines, Drivers and Power Electronics; Microelectronics; Instrumentations, Sensors and MEMS. DIEES-UNICT has a library devoted to the collection of publications in the areas of Electrical, Electronic and Systems Engineering. Research Laboratory has been developed in the following areas: systems and control, Electromagnetic CAD, electrical machines and power electronics, measurements, microelectronics. Every laboratory is equipped with updated hardware and software systems both for the educational and the experimental activities.
The Systems and Control group of DIEES-UNICT has been involved in research topics regarding robotics and automatic control in various European (ESPRIT, BRITE Euram III, IST) and national (MURST, CNR, ASI, POP) research projects. In the laboratory of DIEES-UNICT several prototypes of service and mobile robots have been designed and built (ROBINSPEC: Robot for inspections of industrial plants, PLIF: Piezoelectric microrobots, WALLY: Robot for surface inspections, WHEELEG: Hybrid wheeled/legged robot, OPR Orange Picking robot). Moreover, bio-inspired walking and swimming machines were built, among which REXABOT, a bio-inspired insect-like 6 leg robot, and LAMPBOT, a lamprey-like swimming robot. The main activities have been concentrated on soft-computing techniques for control, modelling and applications of cellular neural networks. The group has a considerable expertise in all aspects of software and hardware design for embedded systems. The group coordinates the EC projects ROBOVOLC (A Robot for Volcano Exploration), SPARK (Spatial Temporal Patterns for Action Oriented Perception in Roving Robots), has participated in the project DICTAM (Dynamic Image Computing using Tera speed Analogic visual Microprocessor), and is actually partner of the project ISAMCO. The group is in the executive committee of the Thematic Network CLAWAR and is a member of the Network of Excellence EURON 2.
METEC
METEC is a privately owned Italian SME high tech company actively involved in Service Engineering, Research, Development and Design activities in the field of Material Sciences and Computing, with headquarter in Turin, Italy. Business strategy / core business activities : Research, Development and Design activities in the fields of innovative materials and surface treatments for tools, tooling, dies, moulds and mechanical parts, administrative coordination of National and European RTD projects.