The “Recycling Li-ion batteries for electric Vehicle” (ReLieVe) project, founded by Eramet, BASF and SUEZ, will receive a substantial funding of €4.7 million by EIT Raw Materials, a consortium initiated and funded by the European Union, and the three members. The objective is to develop an innovative closed-loop process to recycle lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles and to enable the production of new lithium-ion batteries in Europe.

German chemical giant BASF announced Wednesday plans with French companies Eramet and Suez to recycle lithium-ion batteries from electric cars, aiming to secure a leading role in a growing market. Backed by 4.7 million euros ($5.2 million) of EU funding, “the objective is to develop an innovative closed-loop process to recycle lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles and to enable the production of new Continue reading→

Funding from the Army will support advanced work on cold spray; the portable repair and manufacturing technique could increase the readiness of military vehicles and other units.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has received a three-year, $25 million award from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory (CCDC-ARL) to advance a 3D printing technique that could be used to repair vehicles and other critical technology in the field, avoiding the sometimes extensive wait for new parts and increasing the readiness of military units. The new award builds on the university’s deep and distinctive experience with powder metallurgy and computational tools for materials design gained with nearly $30 million in previous Army funding.

“Cold spray is a foundational technology with a wide variety of applications, in the military and beyond.”
Danielle Cote, assistant professor of materials science and engineering
and director of WPI’s Center for Materials Processing Data

The current Army Research Laboratory (ARL) award will focus on a technique called cold spray, which can be used to repair metal parts or even make new parts from scratch by building up metal layer by layer in a process known as additive manufacturing, commonly known 
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U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Rogelio Lopez, 60th Maintenance Squadron assistant aircraft metals technology section chief, loads Ultem 9085 material into a canister for use in the Stratasys F900 three-dimensional printer Aug. 15, 2019, Travis Air Force Base, California. Travis AFB is the first field-unit location in the Air Force to have the Stratays F900 3-D industrial printer certified by the Federal Aviation Administration and Air Force Advanced Technology and Training Center for use on aircraft replacement parts. (U.S. Air Force photo by Louis Briscese)

The U.S. Air Force is collaborating with blockchain as a service (BaaS) company SIMBA Chain to enhance security in additive manufacturing. The partnership is part of the force’s Blockchain Approach for Supply Chain Additive Manufacturing Parts (BASECAMP) project. BASECAMP will use the SIMBA Chain platform to demonstrate a blockchain approach for the registration and tracking of 3DContinue reading→

Researchers from Australian’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) have formulated new ways of testing how alloys suffer plastic damage. The method studies dislocations present in the microstructure of the material and can estimate a component’s service lifetime. The team, led by Dr Ondrej Muránsky, used Electron Back-Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) and High-Resolution Synchrotron Diffraction (HRSD) to see how materials were affected after being subjected to stress.

It is of technological importance to understand the accumulation of plastic damage or deformation in components under various operating conditions in order to estimate their service lifetime. A team of international researchers led by ANSTO have compared two novel techniques that can be used to assess the degree of accumulated plastic damage in alloys by measuring the amount of dislocations present in the microstructure.   Lead author Dr Ondrej Muránsky said they used Electron Back-Scatter Diffraction (EBSD) and High-Resolution Synchrotron Diffraction (HRSD) to obtain complementary information about the dislocations stored by the material as a result Continue reading→

German researchers explore creep properties in superalloys, detailing their findings in the recently published ‘Creep properties of single crystal Ni-base superalloys (SX): A comparison between conventionally cast and additive manufactured CMSX-4 materials.’ The authors compare both microstructures and the creep properties of two different types of single crystal Ni-base superalloys. Single crystal Ni-baseContinue reading→

A new light metals research centre, based at Brunel’s Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST) is set to revitalise the UK metals industry. Global manufacturers, suppliers and consultants will help train the metallurgists of the future and reinforce the UK as a world leader in metallurgical science. A £16m grant from The UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF) was announced by Universities, Science and Innovation Minister Chris Skidmore. Named the Future Metallurgy Centre, the new facility will develop new casting technologies and next generation aluminium, magnesium alloys for things like top-performing cars and planes. Already, it hasContinue reading→

A titanium alloy is a strong metal and, together with the new technique, could make helicopters more reliable in difficult environmental conditions, including at sea and in the desert, analysts said. Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military analyst, told the Global Times that a fatigue-resistant rotor could also allow a helicopter to work under higher stress, including maintaining high speeds for extended periods or lifting heavier cargo for longer distances. The anti-fatigue feature is important because rotor fatigue is not always noticeable, causing unforeseen dangers, the report said.

China recently mastered a new fatigue-resistant technology for helicopter rotors, which could greatly expand the helicopters’ capability and service time, a development which military experts said on Tuesday could be of strategic value to China’s domestic helicopter industry as the technology could be used on China’s future heavy-lift transport helicopters and attack helicopters. During the development of an unidentified helicopter, engineers at Changhe Aircraft Industry (Group) Corporation Ltd under theContinue reading→

By means of laser powder build-up welding, components made of different materials can be integrally manufactured. Thus, specific materials can be placed exactly where their properties are required. This offers, for example, the prospect of lighter, better and cost-reduced blades for gas turbines

Fraunhofer IWS engineers have refined laser powder buildup welding over decades in order to allow more materials to be applied in additive manufacturing. In this procedure, a system feeds various filler powders into a process zone. There, a laser melts the powder and deposits it on a workpiece surface. As a result, the desired part is generated in a layer by layer process. “One of the advantages of this additive procedure is that we can adapt the process very flexibly to the requirements of high-performance materials,” explains Fraunhofer IWS project administrator Michael Müller. In this way it is also possible, for example, to print nickel-based alloys that are difficult to weldContinue reading→

June 18, 2019 – An advanced manufacturing process to produce nanostructured rods and tubes directly from high-performance aluminum alloy powder — in a single step — was recently demonstrated by researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Using a novel Solid Phase Processing approach, the research team eliminated several steps that are required during conventional extrusion processing of aluminum alloy powders, while also achieving a significant increase inContinue reading→