In a few weeks, the nine partners of METALMORPHOSIS will meet to celebrate the forth Steering Committee Meeting. The overall aim of the project is to develop a new range of novel metal-composite hybrid products for the automotive industry, using the new and innovative electromagnetic pulse technology, which is highly suitable for joining dissimilar metal products. The current application range of this technology will be extended during the project towards joining of composite and metals. Mechanical joints like bolting or riveting are reliable and widely accepted, but they create local stress concentrations which reduce the strength of the components by as much as 50%, enough to eliminate the envisaged weight gains in many designs. Bonded joints are effective, but require very secure engineering, clean production environments and well-trained personnel to ensure reliable joints. Moreover, companies, and specially SMEs, lack the skills to design and produce reliable bonded structures.
Attending to this scenario, METALMORPHOSIS proposes the design of three automotive components: a shock absorber, a brake pedal and a bumper support. Research efforts have been applied to optimize all the parameters of the joining process combining experiments and simulation by finite elements methodology. The project has recently passed its midline and is evolving as expected.
One day before the meeting, the Exploitation Strategy Seminar will be celebrated at CIDAUT facilities. The working day will start with an ”ice breaking” session and will cover all the aspects and activities of exploitation from the state of the art to the intellectual property rights. The ESS will be driven by an expert and all the partners will attend: Belgium Welding Institute, Centimfe, Cidaut, Ideko, Poynting, Regeneracija, Stam, Tenneco and Toolpresse. The main aim of this Exploitation Strategy Seminar is to have an expert evaluating the list of exploitable results and assessing the partners on the best possible strategies to exploit them, solving the possible ownership and conflicts that arise in the process.