We focus on the development of advanced rolled products for sheet and foil, which are predominantly used in the automotive, building, engineering, packaging, printing, and heat transfer industries.
We achieve results by relying on broad expertise in wrought aluminium materials and surfaces, applications, manufacturing processes, and downstream processing.
Our work is ably supported by numerous state-of-the-art labs and semi-scale production facilities, utilizing the most advanced methods, such as computational modeling and simulation. The ultimate goal is to precisely serve our rolling plants and their final customers.
We seek continuous improvement in our core competencies by relying on a powerful network of internal experts as well as renowned scientific partners in many countries. The Rolling competence center is based at two of Hydro's aluminium R&D centers - Bonn, Germany and Karmøy, Norway.
Materials and Product Development
Aluminium and its alloys offer a variety of unique properties in rolled products:
- Lightweight
- Well ductile but stable
- Multi-functional surface treatable
- Corrosion resistant
- Conductive
- Protective
- Ready-to-join
We are highly experienced in optimizing material properties. Beyond that, we feel constantly challenged to innovate and make wider use of functionally advanced, thinner, lighter, or stronger aluminium in final products. Striving for new applications is supported by our skilled FE modeling capabilities.
Our well-equipped technical lab facilities enable us to conduct material and product developments along the full process chain. By semi-scale thin strip casting or DC rolling ingot casting, followed by hot rolling, cold rolling and annealing, we are able to produce sheet materials ready for first application tests. For material characterization and further development, there are a number of highly experienced laboratories at Bonn and Karmøy:
- Chemistry
- Metallography and electron optics
- Mechanical testing
- Etching, surface conversion and finishing
- Sheet metal forming
- Joining and brazing
- Corrosion testing
Process development
Manufacturing and downstream processes, from thin strip casting or hot rolling via strip surface finishing, to sheet forming at our customers’ location - we have built up extensive know-how in support of our customers. Close project collaboration with field operations enables us to constantly grow our expertise.
Specific processing parameters for strip casting, hot and cold rolling, cladding, heat treatment and strip processing; optimization of coolants and lubricants, characterization of chemical process agents; and consultancy in joining and sheet forming. Our R&D results contribute to best practice processing at optimum cost, for best quality products.
Especially hot rolling is a key process for our products, with the material's inner structure and strength formed during this operation greatly determining final product properties and performance in their applications.
We are consistently focusing on achieving customized sheet properties for advanced applications, by developing suitable thermo-mechanical process parameters to control the desired microstructure and texture.
