Project Details
Projekt
Optimizing Recyclability and Sustainability of High-Speed Steels via Data-Driven Microstructural Design
Subject Area
Mechanical Properties of Metallic Materials and their Microstructural Origins
Mechanics
Mechanics
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 562095042
The primary objective of this project is to develop methods for the design of new lean-alloy high-speed steels (HSS) with maximized performance properties to increase recyclability and thus sustainability. As the service life in operation of HSS is rather short leading to many recycling cycles per year, the amounts of recycled material per year and thus the potential benefits of the new HSS are significant. Further, these steels share a similar alloy and material design and thus, it may be possible to reduce the number of alloy variations by deriving suitable substitution alloys. Reducing the number of alloying elements, especially critical, i.e. limited or costly ones (lean-alloy approach), would additionally enhance recyclability. In this project, methods will be developed to quantify the complex interaction of chemistry composition, microstructure morphology, and microscopic phase properties with the overall performance properties. Starting from a specific, new alloying concept, CALPHAD and phase-field simulations will be used to obtain information regarding the microstructure and the chemical composition of individual phases as a function of manufacturing process parameters. To quantify mechanical properties, ab-inito calculations and experimental testing will be considered, which will enter the computer simulation of large sets of microstructures required as training data to construct an ML-based surrogate for the description of structure-property linkages. This surrogate is then used within an automatized optimization of microstructure morphology and single-phase properties by incorporating tolerable microstructure variations and additional constraints to reflect a sufficient manufacturability of the HSS. Based on these results, the identified tool steel will be produced, tested and its real performance and limitations will be assessed resulting in updated alloying concepts entering the iterative loop of analysis and microstructure optimization.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
