Engineering news
The world's largest-ever consortium for metals research and manufacturing, with 180 industrial and academic members from across Europe, was launched at London's Science Museum.
Metallurgy Europe is being funded by a €1 billion for the next seven years under the pan-European Eureka organisation. The programme, which is being headed up by the European Space Agency (ESA), aims to discover new alloys, compounds, composites, superconductors and semiconductors and to develop new manufacturing techniques, such as large scale 3D printing, for use in a wide range of sectors.
The programme features a roll-call of almost every major engineering company in Europe. Members include: Airbus, BP, Daimler, Rolls-Royce, BMW, Thales, PSA Group, BAE Systems, Philips, RUAG, Bombardier, Tata Steel, GKN, ArcelorMittal, SKF and ThyssenKrupp, to name just a few of the key players. More than 60 small and medium-sized companies are also participating. The research programme is being funded 60% by public money and 40% by industry.
Representatives for all 180 members of the consortium will meet at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, Holland later this month to decide on the research projects to start next year.
Professor David Jarvis, chairman of Metallurgy Europe and head of strategic and emerging technologies at the European Space Agency (ESA), said: “It's never been done at this scale anywhere, not in the US or China. We're the largest-ever consortium of this type in the world and the level of investment should keep Europe at the forefront of metals research for the foreseeable future.
“Metallurgy Europe is a large scale, unifying research programme for metals in industry and manufacturing. There is a lot of high impact industrialisation that will come out of this programme over the coming years.
“We need to still be making things in Europe and we have to keep discovering new materials and new manufacturing techniques to make sure we can continue to do that in the coming years.”
The 180 participating companies and laboratories represent a tenth of the European economy with a combined annual revenue of around €1 trillion, he said. The consortium expects Metallurgy Europe to create 100,000 jobs in heavy industry such as metals producers, foundries, castings and component suppliers as well as in sectors were metals were used such as automotive and aerospace.
The research programme is split into 13 research areas. Each area will receive between €80-€100 million in funding. Individual projects will be comparatively large by European standards, between €10-€30 million per project and typically last for four years. Most of the projects will be pre-competitive and companies will retain ownership of any intellectual property developed.
“Framework programme seven is very atomised. This project is bottom-up and is about what industry actually wants and society needs. It's very strategic work,” Jarvis said. “We hope to play an enabling role in things like commercialising nuclear fusion plants, superconducting power lines and magnets. We hope our work will make space launches more affordable, develop automated large-scale 3D printing and metallic energy carriers.”
Eureka is an intergovernmental organisation with 40 members, including the EU, Switzerland and Israel, set up in 1985 to ensure Europe did not lose out to the US and Asian countries in terms of technological and industrial innovation.