Agenda Step 3. Accelerate materials development
In order to meet the new demands for materials more rapidly, a number of aspects of
materials development need improvement. One of these is our material models – how
alloy composition and other aspects of materials design affect performance. Another
is the understanding of how the various steps in the process chain from raw material to
finished product affect the final properties. Since today’s manufacturing is largely based
on empirical understanding, methods for theoretical and experimental modeling need
to be developed in order to increase the possibility to predict and control processes
to give the correct properties. Sweden is already a world leader in the above areas. By
increasing the pace of development of our models - both theoretical and experimental
- we can maintain our lead and thereby our possibility to continue to lead development
in the future. But that is not enough. Implementation of the new materials and process
knowledge in production requires improved - sometimes newly developed – production
technology. This may involves heavy investment and risk-taking. In order to translate
products into market offerings, knowledge on how best to use the new material properties
in construction, and how the different stages of material production and construction
are achieved, is needed.
The goal is that the Swedish metal industry will have a world-leading ability to move
rapidly from a materials concept to full-scale production with the right properties to
meet a demand for functionality.