KKS Kylteknik stång

The research project is within the scope of the Intelligent Industry research area which is one of the four strategic research areas at the University of Gävle. The main aim of the project is to promote long-term sustainable production within the steel industry, where design of advance production systems, innovation, resource efficiency as well as competitiveness are the key elements. This project is a cooperation with Swedish steel companies SSAB and Outokumpu and has been funded by KKS and University of Gävle.

The “Living lab of Advanced technology for cooling of metals” at the University of Gävle is the research environment where the research project is performed. The main aim of the Living lab is to create a long term platform that supports companies in the development of new materials and cooling processes, and to support the formation of new companies based on the new technologies for cooling of metals. The Living lab has been equipped with advance physical test facilities for cooling of long and flat products such as pipe, bar and sheet, resources for computer simulation, as well as resources for materials testing.

The project aim is to reveal the spatial-temporal behavior of a newly developed cooling technology in order to produce steel bars with excellent properties and to control the phase transformation and residual stresses to achieve optimal performance of the steel bars depending on the application. The project objectives are:

• Explore experimentally the underlying heat transfer mechanisms and spatial-temporal behavior of the proposed cooling technology for heat treatment of carbon and stainless steel bars.
• Enable optimization of steel bar properties, by controlling the phase transformation and residual stresses for optimal performance of the bar using the new cooling technology.
• Evaluate the material properties, cost-effective flexibility potential, resource efficiency, etc. for the heat treatment of steel bars using the new cooling technology.
• Make data and tools available for replication and renewal of science.
• Disseminate results and conclusions to the relevant stakeholders.