Improving Cleanliness of Remelted High-Performance Tool Steel

Research question

This project addresses a special type of quality-reducing impurities often found in Electroslag Remelted (ESR) tool steels; MgO-Al₂O₃ spinel inclusions. Both origin and measures to minimise their existence will be investigated by a combination of industrial trials, small-scale experiments, and modelling. With the end-goal to deliver an as clean tool steel as possible, in terms of MgO-Al₂O₃ spinels, resulting in improved final properties.

Sustainability aspects

Providing the market with cleaner and more durable tool steel solutions impacts sustainability on all levels in the value chain, reaching from producers of ingoing raw materials such as alloys, all the way to end-consumers of the finished products. The largest impact can be found in different levels depending on type of product, i.e., tool steel used for manufacturing packaging would have the largest impact on the manufacturing process itself by prolonged tool-life. Meanwhile, manufacturing components to Electrical Vehicles (EV) would impact the sustainability in increasing the lifetime and quality of the EV. The same scenario is true when tool steel is used as components/products, e.g., in bolts and nuts holding wind turbine blades.