Current projects and research topics

The Institute for Metal Forming at TU Bergakademie Freiberg is a think tank and future laboratory. In the laboratories and research facilities, scientists develop innovative techniques and processes. Their knowledge and expertise makes the Institute of Metal Forming a sought-after partner for research and cooperation projects with industry. Currently, the employees, in their respective working groups, are researching the following projects:

Light Metals Working Group:

• Substitution of rare-earth elements in high-strength and ductile magnesium sheet materials
• System-integrative multi-material lightweight construction for electromobilityt
• Saxon alliance for material- and resource-saving technologies
• Investigations and determination of characteristic values for caliber development in continuous wire rolling of magnesium alloys
• Holistic implementation of resource-efficient shaping processes
• Development of wire casting rolling technology for magnesium pre-wire profiles
• Leika: resource-efficient mixed construction methods for lightweight car bodies
• hybCrash: near-series technologies for highly stressed hybrid multilayer crash structures
• Production of magnesium wire mesh-plastic composites
• dahlia: digital technologies for hybrid lightweight structures

Steel and Other Heavy Metals Working Group:

• Low-loss Fe Si sheet for energy-efficient electrical drives
• Typification of materials in musical instrument making
• Prevention of zinc corrosion in brass musical instrument making
• Development of new high strength austenitic stainless steels for large lightweight storage applications
• Practice-oriented extension of the damage prediction for low reject production in cold forging of steels with non-metallic inclusions as damage initiators

Numerical Simulation Working Group:

• Controlled solid-liquid transition in casting rolling
• Laminated material composites made of TRIP/TWIP steels with tailored properties
• Multi-functional, coarse-grained, refractory composites and material composites for large-volume key components in high-temperature processes (Refrabund)
• Fast simulation tool for long product rolling

Hot Forming Simulation Working Group:

• MiVia Innovation of material quality control with artificial intelligence
• Accelerated nanobainitic transformation in low-alloy steels processed by incremental forging (NanoBainControl)
• Manufacturing load-customized aluminium components by local control of cooling rates as part of Tailor Quenched Forming (combined forming, quenching and hardening process)
• Development of partial press hardening utilizing advanced bainite transformation models (PressBain)