Professor Franco Bonollo describes some of the challenges faced by the aluminium alloy industry in relation to the recent financial downturn, and discusses the need for improved standardisation

Can you outline your background? What led to your research in ‘New Quality and Design Standards for Aluminium Alloys Cast Products’ (StaCast)?

I graduated in Chemical Engineering and am currently Professor of Metallurgy at Padua University, Italy. My research mainly focuses on foundry and casting processes, with

specific reference to those using aluminium-based alloys. It is a research activity carried out in an applied industrial context. During my work, I have found that improvements in this field can be achieved by means of innovation and organisation. In this sense, the availability of European-based standardised tools for evaluating the quality of products, describing the mechanical potential of alloys and optimising design solutions is crucial. The StaCast Project concentrates on these topics, and its activity has been carried out in cooperation with the European Committee for Standardization (CEN).

How are aluminium alloy casting products most frequently used? How important is this industry in the European economy?

The end-users of aluminium cast products are mainly the transport industry (60 per cent), mechanics (7 per cent), electro-mechanics (9 per cent) and civil engineering (20 per cent). Currently, an ‘average’ European car is built using about 150 kg of aluminium-based components and systems, in most cases produced by means of foundry processes. According to European Foundry Association

(CAEF) official data, EU production of non-ferrous castings was estimated to be 3.2 million tonnes in 2012, with about 2,000 foundries and 100,000 people directly employed in the industry. The suppliers (including materials, technology, engineering services and consumables) of EU foundries are roughly estimated to be at least of a similar size in terms of the number of companies and employees.

You have concluded that around 200,000 tonnes of metal is wasted every year. Why is this waste occurring, and what methods have you implemented to reduce this number?

Foundry processes intrinsically generate defects or imperfections, due to the extremely high number of operative parameters that can be only be partially controlled. In addition, some alloy foundry processes have high production rates. For various reasons, defect detection is usually carried out at the end of the manufacturing cycle, often delaying with respect to the time of casting production. This strongly affects both costs and delivery time. In several cases, scrap rates range from 5-10 per cent. Considering annual production, every year in Europe roughly 150,000-200,000 tonnes of

An efficient future for aluminium alloys

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ALUMINIUM ALLOYS ARE a group of materials with impressive yet underutilised potential. These materials are important for a number of industries, including aerospace, transport and civil engineering. They also have the potential to make further and significant contributions to the challenge of reducing global energy consumption. As a result, the importance of these alloys has not gone unnoticed and several international collaborations are working to expand their use in future industrial efforts.

Of these collaborations, one of the most impressive is the ‘New Quality and Design Standards for Aluminium Alloys Cast Products‘ (StaCast) project, led by Professor Franco Bonollo from University of Padua in Italy. A project that has united academics, industry groups and government bodies from four European countries, StaCast aims to improve the efficiency of aluminium alloy production in Europe by implementing process change via the development and promotion of new European Committee for Standardization (CEN) Technical Reports. The consortium is made up of departments from the universities of Padua (Professor Giulio Timelli; Giorgio Kral; Elena Fiorese), Trondheim (Professor Lars Arnberg) and Aalen (Dr Walter Leis). Also among its ranks are the Italian Association

of Metallurgy (AIM; Professor Elisabetta Gariboldi and Dr Piero Parona), Federation of Aluminium Consumers in Europe (FACE; Dr Mario Conserva) and Italian Standardisation Body for non-ferrous metals and alloys (UNIMET; Dr Giancarlo Mei). Its mixed academic and industrial approach has made StaCast impressive in its diversity and range of expertise.

The aluminium casting industry is of global importance. However, despite the clear success and recent growth, there remains space for improvement – it is this space that Bonollo and his colleagues in the StaCast project have targeted, with great success.

UNDERSTANDING INEFFICIENCY

The processes involved in making aluminium alloys castings are challenging, and numerous variables exist, all of which can cause defects. Bonollo and his team have calculated that these defects account for 200,000 tonnes of wasted metal every year in Europe. This waste damages the success of the foundries and increases the burden they place on the environment. As such, reducing the waste percentage in European foundries has been a crucial objective for the StaCast project since its inception.

Waste not, want notAn international team of academics and industry bodies interested in the field of aluminium alloys has driven the StaCast research programme that has made impressive contributions to the aluminium alloy industry

aluminium alloys are molten and cast only to produce scrap!

How has the economic downturn affected the aluminium alloy industry?

As mentioned, the main market for aluminium-based castings is the transport industry, and particularly the field of automotive applications. Consequently, due to the economic crisis, aluminium casting production was severely reduced from 2008-10, with a partial recovery in subsequent years. Most of the 2,000 aluminium alloy foundries in Europe are SMEs (with an average number of employees well below 50), with poor internal resources for pinpointing and performing innovation strategies for competitiveness. This situation made it difficult to provide effective and ‘structural’ solutions to the crisis.

What are the main features of current EU standards on aluminium alloy casting defects and mechanical properties, and how have you developed and improved them?

There are various CEN standards in the field of aluminium alloys casting. These standards are crucial for quality assurance in products. StaCast has submitted two proposals for CEN Technical Reports that will improve the impact of EU standards by allowing the systematic classification of defects (and associated corrective actions) along with the evaluation of mechanical potential of aluminium-based alloys (in view of more reliable casting design). In both cases, StaCast offers additive support with respect to pre-existing EU standards.

Can you describe your role at the World Foundry Congress: Advanced Sustainable Foundry on 19-21 May 2014 in Bilbao, Spain?

During this conference, I presented the main achievements of the StaCast project to the scientific community. The Congress is a platform for exchanging technical knowledge and building personal and professional relationships with the common goal of a prosperous and sustainable future for the foundry industry. It was a very important opportunity for disseminating the outcomes of StaCast, with particular regard to the increase in quality, reliability and competitiveness in aluminium-based cast products. AN INFRA-RED IMAGE OF A CASTING PROCESS AN EXAMPLE OF ALUMINIUM ALLOY CASTING

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PROFESSOR FRANCO BONOLLO

Now reaching the end of its one-and-a-half year duration, the project has made significant steps towards this objective, with the production and dissemination of a key document: “The availability of a new CEN Technical Report, specifically focused on quality, will help foundries reduce costs and expand the margins of their competitiveness,” explains Bonollo.

This document lays out a standardised system for describing, detailing and defining defects in aluminium alloys: “Starting from a review of existing literature and taking advantage of a two-year survey carried out by AIM, the StaCast project suggested a new system of classification based on a three-tier defect definition,” expands Bonollo. In simple terms, this system describes the morphology, metallurgic origin and specific types of defects seen in aluminium alloys. Such definitions are crucial, as a quantitative and qualitative understanding of the defects in a foundry provides decision makers with the information they need to correct process errors and remove defects from their supply chain.

The newly produced document has the potential to be widely embraced across Europe, providing the industry with an agreed language for defining defects, and thus enabling dialogue and facilitating corrective change.

AUTOMOTIVE WEIGHT LOSS

A second core objective for the StaCast team was to define and classify the mechanical potential of aluminium alloys used by European foundries. “The mechanical potential of an aluminium-based foundry alloy has been defined as the tensile properties (ultimate tensile strength, yield strength and elongation), which can be expected from the material if cast using state-of-the-art techniques,” outlines Bonollo. By embracing these tools, foundries can reduce the quantity of defects in their products and reliably estimate their mechanical properties.

The area with perhaps the most relevant potential for aluminium alloys is the automotive industry. It has been estimated that reducing the mass of a standard modern car by 100 kg is equivalent to a fuel saving of 1,000 litres in the lifecycle of that car. Excitingly, aluminium alloys have the potential to exceed 10 per cent weight reduction: “It has been demonstrated that an optimum use of light alloys could reduce the weight of EU compact cars by 400 kg, which is approximately 30 per cent,” Bonollo points out. Even with such reduction, using aluminium alloys would maintain the safety and performance of current modern vehicles.

DISSEMINATING CHANGE

Beyond recommendations for CEN Technical Reports, Bonollo and colleagues have undertaken a detailed survey of the processes currently used in foundries, engagement of foundry officials with technical documents and their needs for future development. This survey has proved highly valuable and highlighted a challenging lack of engagement with crucial documents that define and standardise multiple

foundry processes such as quality assurance. For example, key technical standards that define ‘Sampling from Metal Melts’ (EN 14361) and ‘Radiographic Inspection’ (EN 12681) – crucial processes for quality assurance in aluminium alloys – are used by only 19 and 25.9 per cent of European foundries interviewed, respectively. In this context, Bonollo and his colleagues recognise the importance of disseminating these already existing standards alongside their new contributions: “It is worth mentioning that a significant amount of focused dissemination still needs to be performed,” he underlines.

The StaCast team has provided an impressive range of mixed expertise due to their diverse backgrounds. It is this multidisciplinarity combined with international collaboration and European funding that has made the project achievable and successful. As their efforts draw to a close, Bonollo and his colleagues are proud, not only of the contribution they have made to the efficiency of the aluminium alloy industry and the environmental benefits this provides, but also of the model of international collaboration and best practice that their programme represents.

EUROPE-WIDE EFFORT

Bonollo is keen to highlight the contributions of preceding and ongoing EU projects within the field, such as:

IDEAL – Integrated Development Routes for Optimised Cast Aluminium Components; 2002-05

NADIA – New Automotive components Designed for and manufactured by Intelligent processing of light Alloys; 2006-10

MUSIC – MUlti-layers control & cognitive System to drive metal and plastic production line for Injected Components; 2012-16

STACAST NEW QUALITY AND DESIGN STANDARDS FOR ALUMINIUM ALLOYS CAST PRODUCTS

OBJECTIVES

To elaborate new standardised tools for improving the quality of aluminium alloy cast products and thus the competitiveness of European foundries.

KEY COLLABORATORS

Professor Giulio Timelli; Giorgio Kral; Elena Fiorese, University of Padua, Italy • Professor Walter Leis, Aalen University, Germany • Professor Lars Arnberg; Anil R Adamane, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway • Federica Bassani; Piero Parona; Professor Elisabetta Gariboldi, Italian Association of Metallurgy (AIM), Italy • Giancarlo Mei, UNIMET – ASSOMET, Italy • Claudio De Cani, Assomet servizi, Italy • Mario Conserva, Federation of Aluminium Consumers in Europe (FACE), Belgium • David Krupka, European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), French Standards Association (AFNOR), France

FUNDING

European Commission (EC), Grant agreement no 319188, in the frame of theme NMP.2012.4.0-2

CONTACT

Dr Franco Bonollo Professor

University of Padua Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems (DTG) Italy

T +39 444 998743 E bonollo@gest.unipd.it

www.stacast-project.org

FRANCO BONOLLO is currently Full Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Padua. He is also Chairman of the International conference ‘High Tech Die Casting’, and President of the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Bachelor Degree programme at the University of Padua.

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