Proposed projects tackle corrosion testing and Additive Manufacturing of hardmetals
September 24, 2019
Two new collaborative projects have been proposed on the corrosion testing and Additive Manufacturing of hardmetals, and are now open for participation. The AddiHM Project will establish benchmarking of three non-laser based AM processes for the production of homogeneous WC-12Co hardmetal blanks. The CorroHM Project will define guidelines to verify the corrosion behaviour of hardmetal grades in liquid environments in a reliable and reproducible way.
The AddiHM project is coordinated by OCSynergies along with Fraunhofer IKTS Dresden, the Katholieke Universiteit KU Leuven, TECNALIA Research & Innovation San Sebastian and the Technical University of Catalonia BarcelonaTech UPC. The aim is to establish a comparison of Fused Filament Fabrication (undertaken at IKTS), metal Binder Jetting (at Tecnalia) and direct ink writing (at KU Leuven). An evaluation of the final AM components will be also carried out at UPC.
It is stated that the AddiHM project will last twelve months and is open for participation to all interested organisations. The total budget of the project is €69,900 to be shared by a minimum of six funding participants.
The CorroHM project is also coordinated by OCSynergies, together with the University Politecnico Milano, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture of University of Zagreb, the National Physics Laboratory of London and the Technical University of Catalonia of Barcelona BarcelonaTech. will soon launch a new Collaborative Project on Corrosion Testing of Hardmetals.
The project will consist of a critical overview of valuable published literature on the topic, it will also offer guidelines for electrochemical measurements on hardmetal corrosion behaviour. A standard cell for inter-laboratory and in-house testing will be developed for all project partners (including industrial funding partners) and corrosion testing of hardmetal grades in different environments will be reported, according to the guidelines.
Electrochemical measurements will consist in the systematic application of Linear Sweep Voltammetry (LSV) and Chronoamperometry (CA), that will be complemented by quantitative data analysis, specifically aiming at the precise quantification of hardmetal corrosion behaviour.
Following this, two different grades in one environment will be selected and measurements and analyses will be performed in different labs, in order to demonstrate the procedure functionality and reliability and the integrity of the samples after corrosion. The project will last eighteen months and is open for participation to all interested organisations. The total budget of the project is EUR 64,000 to be shared by a minimum of four funding participants.
Both of the projects will be conducted in memory of Dr Leo Prakash, who passed away in February 2019 aged sixty-nine, and who first conceived the idea of the projects.
Those interested in joining the CorroHM or the AddiHM project or who wish to receive more information are invited to contact Dr Olivier Coube ([email protected]).