A ground-breaking programme, which will see automotive and aerospace cast components made lighter and from 100% recycled aluminium for the first time, is under way in the Midlands.
Coventry-based casting firm Sarginsons Industries and its wider team of research partners, including Aston Martin, have been awarded a £6m matched grant by the Advanced Propulsion Centre and Innovate UK for its Performance Integrated Vehicle Optimisation Technology project (PIVOT).
It is being described as a game changer in the production of all new vehicles, making them more sustainable, lighter, cheaper and better performing.
Altair – a global leader in computational intelligence that provides software and cloud solutions in simulation, high-performance computing (HPC), data analytics, and AI – will work with Sarginsons to develop software that will use AI to produce organic designs of new chassis components for an existing Aston Martin model.
The software will provide a highly automated simulation driven design process for new components, ensuring rapid development whilst reducing time to market and development costs.
The natural, organic designs the new software produces will actually increase component strength whilst reducing mass by simulating the varying mechanical properties of the part to put the right material in the right place.
The new software will also allow Sarginsons to better support its clients, from across the automotive, aerospace and renewable industries, by allowing them to better control casting development to de-risk production manufacture.
The research will seek to demonstrate that the mass of a vehicle’s chassis can be reduced by up to 30% whilst maintaining mechanical integrity – thus reducing the weight and increasing the driving range of new vehicles.
Another part of the research is paving the way for a sustainable future for the way aluminium is sourced as a raw material for automotive manufacturers – and other manufacturing industries – by using secondary, fully-recycled aluminium for stronger components.
Currently, all structural vehicle components are made by using primary, high carbon un-recycled material. Through strengthening recycled aluminium with trace amounts of key alloying elements, PIVOT will reduce carbon content in a typical vehicle’s aluminium cast components by up to 95%, whilst improving ductility for crash safety, in support of the Advanced Propulsion Centre’s acceleration towards a net zero automotive industry.
Part of the project will see Sarginsons working with Brunel University and metal recycling experts, GESCRAP, to develop grain structure refinement techniques to overcome impurities traditionally inherent in recycled aluminium.
The research will also be developing a new UK-based recycling network for secondary aluminium to kickstart a shift away from using primary aluminium sources, of which there is a finite amount, to secondary aluminium with significantly lower embedded carbon. Currently in Europe, primary material sits at around 12 tonnes of carbon per tonne of aluminium, and is higher elsewhere in the world. 100% recycled secondary material represents a 95% reduction to less than 0.5 tonnes of carbon per tonne of aluminium.
Sarginsons are leading on the research in conjunction with key partners including Aston Martin, Altair, Brunel University London and GESCRAP.
The Torrington Avenue-based firm has secured around £3m of the PIVOT grant to assist with new equipment and workforce expansion for the research.
Gavin Shipley, Technical Director at Sarginsons, said that the PIVOT grant could well be the best £3m that this government has invested in the automotive industry, which is testament to their goal of leading a new green economy.
He said: “This world-first research is a major step not just for the global EV market, but any market that uses aluminium, and has the potential to lay the blueprint for so many industries to increase the efficiency of their manufacturing in a sustainable and affordable way – and it’s happening right here in the Midlands.
“For now, this project’s focus is on electric vehicles. As crucial as un-recycled aluminium has been to the automotive industry due to its strength and reliability, it has high levels of associated carbon, so to have had this level of investment in identifying ways that we can use this material in a sustainable manner is a game changer for this industry.
“The UK exports over 250,000 tonnes of downgraded scrap aluminium to be processed every year, which this proposal should dramatically reduce, while creating new jobs.
“Sarginsons has already been using software to design, develop and test castings – the technology is proven – and this latest PIVOT grant is about developing this technology and making it available to a wider audience for the benefit of the wider manufacturing industry.
“The licensed software will be able to demonstrate to manufacturers ways that aluminium components can be strengthened whilst reducing their mass.
“As a firm we are ideally placed to collaborate and make this research project a success thanks to the ongoing investment we have made in recent years to our software, skilled workforce and our high-tech Sarginsons Technology Centre, where we have helped prestigious manufacturers to develop and test products from scratch.
“It is really exciting to be working on a licensed piece of software that can be used by so many other specialisms, and so I’d like to thank all our partners, collaborators and steering committee members who are supporting this groundbreaking research.”
For more information about the PIVOT research project visit sarginsons.com/services/university-research
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