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BIA-Brukerstyrt innovasjonsarena

AdaptAl - Adaptiv Control of Aluminium Manufacturing

Alternative title: AdaptAl - Adaptiv styring av aluminium produksjon

Awarded: NOK 8.7 mill.

Project Number:

314054

Project Period:

2020 - 2024

Funding received from:

Subject Fields:

Aluminium is increasingly used in demanding products, ranging from PCs and mobile phones, to chairs, bridges and cars. This is due to the material's favourable properties such as low weight, little or no maintenance, high strength, and good corrosion resistance. Whether the end-product is a component to be used in a car, a part of a mobile phone, a chair, or something else, the customers usually give strict requirements for the properties of the end-product. If for instance the geometric shape is not accurate enough according to the customer requirements, the part must often be rejected and sent back to the aluminium producer for recycling. This means significant financial losses for the production companies. This problem is addressed in the present project, where the goal is to develop a technology that allows more aluminium parts to end up as acceptable products, and that a smaller number of parts must be rejected. The goal will be achieved by using so-called adaptive control, where a "digital twin" called PRO3 is utilised. During the production of an aluminium profile, registered data from the processes will be automatically fed into PRO3. PRO3 uses artificial intelligence (AI) and performs advanced and fast simulations, and respond in one of two ways: Either PRO3 says that this is going well, there is no need to make any changes, or PRO3 predicts that the product will end up to be rejected if no adjustments are made in the subsequent process steps. The background for this problem is because there are always natural variations during production, and nothing is exactly the same from one product to the next. Since process data in modern aluminium production are extensively monitored with different types of sensors, and therefore readily available inputs to the digital twin, it is possible to predict when a significant deviation will occur for the end-product, and then calculate which corrective actions that are necessary. In addition to the positive influence of the technology developed in the project in providing less scrap and reduce the production costs, it will also help to lower the CO2 footprint by making it possible to utilize more scrap-based aluminium with relatively large variations in alloy composition, and still produce high-quality aluminium products. The first results obtained in project were very encouraging, since they showed that recycled aluminium, with minimum 75% post consumed scrap metal, could be used in producing a specific product, which is now under serial production. This leads to a significant reduction of the CO2 footprint.

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The overall idea of the project is to develop and demonstrate a product-service-system that integrate multi-physics models, process models, advanced sensors, and virtual data through an optimizing software. The basis for the product-service system is a digital twin called PRO3, which operates through the aluminium process chain. PRO3 has been developed by Hydro during the last ten years and is presently used to simulate and optimize process parameters for internal and external customers in Hydro. In this project, the application of the software is extended to adaptive control. Each process step in the aluminium value chain is associated with process variations as well as variations in chemical composition of the alloy. Without an overall, predictive and adaptive process control system, these variations can accumulate outside tolerance specifications, which may lead to huge added production costs in terms of scrapped components and parts. The adaptive control system that is developed in the project will be demonstrated through extrusion and forming processes on products from the consortium companies within the markets automotive, furniture and sports. Hydro, Raufoss Technology, Flokk and IDT Solutions are all innovative Norwegian manufacturers, emphasizing added value sustainable products for global markets.

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Funding scheme:

BIA-Brukerstyrt innovasjonsarena