Direct Chill Casting
Every piece of metal that you see around is born and will end its life as a melt. Raw metals and master alloys are smelted together to make up an alloy of optimum composition and then cast into ingots, billets and shapes that are used either for further deformation or directly in constructions.
The performance, quality and properties of final products are founded during casting. The as-cast structure and its defects are inherited and, to a great extent, preserved during further processing and life-time use. Production of high-quality, defect-less castings has been a challenge for many generations of metallurgists, and will remain so – for some time. So we have plenty to do! And that is not an easy task. Solidification and casting research calls for synthetic approach, combining physics, chemistry, physical chemistry, and physical metallurgy.
Group “Light Metal Processing” is a leading center for light metal research in The Netherlands and is well known outside the country. We combine within one team fundamental and applied research, computational material science and industrial-scale experiments, casting technology and downstream processing. And we are experts in direct-chill casting, shape casting, rapid solidification. The group is well equipped with modern experimental facilities, including unique in Europe pilot-scale, instrumented direct-chill casting unit and electromagnetic liquid metal pump, as well as small-scale dedicated set-ups for studying thermal contraction and structure development during solidification.
Mainstream research is focused on
- Computer modeling of casting processes and downstream processing
- Experimental and numerical study of structure evolution during solidification and further processing
- Development and optimization of processing routed for light metals
- Recycling of light metals
- Development of new techniques for controlling melt flow and structure development during solidification
