SFI Manufacturing: Sustainable Innovations for Automated Manufacturing of Multi-Material Products

SFI Manufacturing is a collaboration between 14 industrial companies, 3 SINTEF institutes and 5 faculties at NTNU. From the start in 2015, an important activity has been monitoring the research front and trends within selected subject areas. The centre has 16 PhD students and of these 8 have now completed their dissertations and several are well placed to complete their dissertations in 2023. In 2022, the centre has produced a number of important research results, and it can be particularly mentioned that the knowledge that has previously been built up on multimaterial joining transferred to additive manufacturing. This enables the construction of new material combinations and geometries. In addition, we have demonstrated how ontologies can be built up on the basis of established international standards and thus better facilitate the robust sharing of data. This can become an important enabler for Industry 4.0.

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New advances on sustainable and high performance products can be achieved by combining the best properties of different materials. Multi-material products (MMP) are thus a major trend for high performance products in demanding markets such as automotive, aerospace and maritime industry, and opens new potentials for innovations in Norwegian manufacturing industry. Our competitiveness relies on innovative combinations between advanced materials- products, production and systems, and the ability to utilize knowledge and technology efficiently. SFI Manufacturing shall strengthen the Norwegian manufacturing companies ability to innovate and contribute to a competitive manufacturing industry in Norway. The main research areas are: 1: High structural efficiency products based on dissimilar materials 2: Multi-materials robust and adaptive manufacturing processes 3: Robust and Flexible Automation of multi-material processes through next generation sensor based robotics 4: Sustainable innovative organizations in society. We will reach better understanding by combining relevant technical- and social science studies, multi scale modeling approaches and use state-of the art laboratories. We will develop a Multi-material design and product development knowledge base, Novel test methods and identify critical failure mechanisms. Joining processes for dissimilar materials and additive manufacturing will be studied. The research on automation is focused on how to exploit new potentials in the use of sensing and control to achieve cost effective manufacturing in Norway with robustness, more flexibility and more human oriented technology. We aim at developing advanced work systems able to utilize new technologies, smart, dynamic and innovative clusters and to identify enablers for innovations. Our vision is to show that sustainable manufacturing is possible in Norway