The general trend in flotation technology today is towards larger flotation cells, which enables a higher throughput. However, adverse effects such as segregation and reduced froth transport efficiency have also been observed in larger cells. To better understand these problems it is of relevance to understand how the minerals of interest are moving and distributed inside flotation cells. A sampling investigation of industrial scale tank cells has been carried out. The samples have been analyzed by their physical properties, such as grade, solid concentration, particle size distribution and mineral composition. A novel method of measuring the wettability has been validated against traditional techniques for characterizing the surface properties of mineral samples. Different techniques and devices for sampling has also been evaluated. The results showed segregation inside the cells, with the quiescent zone having lower particle size (P80) and lower weight % solid. The grade profile in the vertical direction was relatively constant even though the P80 and weight % solid decreased in the quiescent zone. The smaller particles in the quiescent zone contained higher fraction of soft clay particles, which also correlated with a higher degree of hydrophilicity.

Aerospace and aeronautics industries push forward the research to improve constantly the quality, safety, and cost of flights. The main ways of improving products are to create lighter and better components, under a highly controlled processing from the research and development to the production at a big scale.  To achieve those goals, new processes and new materials are constantly created by engineers. In this perspective, titanium alloys have been developed and studied as they provide good mechanical properties and low density. To reduce the production costs and waste due to machining, additive manufacturing has started to be implemented on the manufacturing chains. Titanium alloys seemed to react very well to additive manufacturing, but there are still some problematics that need to be answered.  The main problematic of this thesis comes from the process development cell. It has been stated that two different titanium-based alloys, Ti-6Al-4V and Ti-6Al-2Mo-4Zr-2Sn, showed the same behavior under additive manufacturing, which is not an evident statement. Therefore, the goal of this work will be to understand the behavior of those two alloys by simulations and use of key parameters in order to model the process in a proper and accurate way.

SSAB has built a pilot gas atomization facility looking to expand their expertise of steel into the metal powder and additive manufacturing industry. Laser powder bed fusion is an additive manufacturing method that melts and fuse metal feedstock powder together layer by layer using a high intensity laser. The complex process requires optimization in order to be competitive. The process parameters laser power, scan speed, hatch distance and layer thickness largely govern the build rate and total production time. To increase the build rate, two iterations of test cubes with unique parameters sets were experimentally printed. Evaluation of relative density, porosity, microstructure, hardness and mechanical properties was performed. All results were compared to a reference parameter set previously studied. A candidate parameter set successfully increased the build rate by 116% while maintaining satisfactory material properties.

High entropy alloys (HEAs) are a new class of alloys that contains five or more principal elements in equiatomic or near-equiatomic proportional ratio. The configuration entropy in the HEAs tends to stabilize the solid solution formation, such as body-centered-cubic (BCC), face-centered-cubic (FCC) and/or hexagonal-closed-pack (HCP) solid solution. The high number of principal elements present in HEAs results in severe lattice distortion, which in return gives superior mechanical properties compared to the conventional alloys. HEAs are considered as a paradigm shift for the next generation high temperature alloys in extreme environments, such as aerospace, cutting tools, and bearings applications. The project is based on the development of refractory high entropy alloy and film. The first part of the project involves designing high entropy alloy of CuMoTaWV using spark plasma sintering (SPS) at 1400 oC. The sintered alloy showed the formation of a composite of BCC solid solution (HEA) and V rich zones with a microhardness of 600 HV and 900 HV, respectively. High temperature ball-on-disc tribological studies were carried out from room temperature (RT) to 600 oC against Si3N4 counter ball. Sliding wear characterization of the high entropy alloy composite showed increasing coefficient of friction (COF) of 0.45-0.67 from RT to 400 oC and then it decreased to 0.54 at 600 oC. The wear rates were found to be low at RT (4 × 10⁠−3 mm⁠3/Nm) and 400 oC (5 × 10⁠−3 mm⁠3/Nm) and slightly high at 200 oC (2.3 × 10⁠−2 mm⁠3/Nm) and 600 oC (4.5 × 10⁠−2 mm⁠3/Nm). The tribology tests showed adaptive behavior with lower wear rate and COF at 400 oC and 600 oC, respectively. The adaptive wear behavior at 400 oC was due to the formation of CuO that protected against wear, and at 600 oC, the V-rich zones converted to elongated magneli phases of V2O5 and helped in reducing the friction coefficient. The second part of the project consists of sintering of novel CuMoTaWV target material using SPS and depositing CuMoTaWV refractory high entropy films (RHEF) using DC-magnetron sputtering on silicon and 304 stainless steel substrate. The deposited films showed the formation of nanocrystalline BCC solid solution. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies showed a strong (110) preferred orientation with a lattice constant and grain size of 3.18 Å and 18 nm, respectively. The lattice parameter were found to be in good agreement with the one from the DFT optimized SQS (3.16 Å). The nanoindentation hardness measurement at 3 mN load revealed an average hardness of 19 ± 2.3 GPa and an average Young’s modulus of 259.3 ± 19.2 GPa. The Rutherford backscattered (RBS) measurement showed a gradient composition in the cross-section of the film with W, Ta and Mo rich at the surface, while V and Cu were found to be rich at the substrate-film interface. AFM measurements showed an average surface roughness (Sa) of 3 nm. Nano-pillars of 440 nm diameter from CuMoTaWV RHEFs were prepared by ion-milling in a focused-ion-beam (FIB) instrument, followed by its compression. The compressional yield strength and Young’s modulus was calculated to be 10.7 ± 0.8 GPa and 196 ± 10 GPa, respectively. Room temperature ball-on-disc tribological test on the CuMoTaWV RHEF, after annealing at 300 oC, against E52100 alloy steel (Grade 25, 700-880 HV) showed a steady state COF of 0.25 and a low average wear rate of 6.4 x 10-6 mm3/Nm.

Iron- and steel production is a material- and energy intensive industrial activity. The production of one tonne of steel commonly results in some 400 kilograms of residual materials such as metallurgical slags, dusts, sludge and scales generated in the processes. Much work is continuously devoted to finding possible ways of using residual materials and minimising landfilled volumes. As these materials often contain considerable amounts of valuable elements such as iron, coal, manganese and calcium, it may be profitable to use them to replace virgin raw materials or to sell them as products that may be useful in other industries and/or processes.    The thesis is based on case studies that exemplify how the use of process integration, through system analysis, can assist in assessing effects and opportunities for different concepts for increased material efficiency in Nordic ore-based steelmaking systems. The process integration approach taken for this research work was the simulation of a specific iron- and steel production system and the use of an optimisation tool for the evaluation of an extended system including the symbiosis between four steel plants.   Three different cases were studied including: system effects of increased magnesium oxide content in the lime raw material, investigation of the prospects for vanadium enrichment and slag reduction concept and a study of the logistics perspective for a joint residual material upgrading and recycling venture between four steel plants. The analysed cases present possibilities to improve the material efficiency by: •      Enhanced recovery of residual materials; •      Upgrading of residual materials to products; •      Specific elements recovery; •      Decreased use of virgin raw material; •      Improved quality of residual materials; •      Decreased amounts of materials placed in long-term storage or landfills.   From the results of the cases studied, the best scenarios and potential gains by enhanced material efficiency is presented. In the case of system effects of increased magnesium oxide content in the lime raw material, the issue was mainly to obtain maximum usage of metallurgical slags without compromising the quality of the main product. The calculated possibility of increased slag recirculation enabled further a decreased consumption of iron ore pellet and limestone. Regarding the investigation of the vanadium enrichment and slag reduction concept, the best scenario markedly increased the internal slag recirculation in order to enrich the vanadium content in the slag for ferrovanadium production. By the vanadium enrichment and recovery concept, considerable amounts of vanadium would be made useful instead of ending up in long-term storage. The study of a shared Nordic concept for residual materials upgrading and use demonstrated the potential for upgrading the materials to a direct reduced iron product for recovery in blast furnace. The concept showed high potential for significantly reducing the amount of material being long-term stored or deposited to landfill and thus a potential step towards achieving the zero-waste philosophy target.   None of the concepts for enhanced material efficiency studied in this thesis work has been implemented; however, they are still of relevance for the Nordic steel industry.

Layer by layer manufacturing (additive manufacturing, AM) of metals is emerging as an alternative to conventional subtractive manufacturing with the goal of enabling near net-shape production of complex part geometries with reduced material waste and shorter lead times. Recently this field has experienced rapid growth through industrial adaptation but has simultaneously encountered challenges. One such challenge is the ability of AM metal to withstand loading conditions ranging from static loads to complex multiaxial thermo-mechanical fatigue loads. This makes fatigue performance of AM materials a key consideration for the implementation of AM in production. This is especially true for AM in the aerospace industry where safety standards are strict. Defects in metal AM materials include rough surfaces, pores and lack-of-fusion (LOF) between build layers. These defects are detrimental to fatigue as they act as local stress concentrators that can give rise to cracks in the material.  Some defects can be avoided by careful build process optimization and/or post-processing but fully eliminating all defects is not possible. Because of this, a need arises for the capability to estimate the fatigue performance of AM produced critical components containing defects. The aim of the thesis is to increase understanding regarding the connection between defect characteristics and the fatigue behaviour in AM produced Ti-6Al-4V. Defect distributions are statistically analysed for use in a simple fracture mechanical model for fatigue life prediction. Other study areas include the impact of post-production treatments such as chemical surface treatments and hot isostatic pressing (HIP) on defects and fatigue behaviour. The thesis constitutes three scientific papers. The AM technique studied in these papers is Electron Beam Melting (EBM) in which an electron beam selectively melts pre-alloyed metal powder. In paper 1, defects were studied using X-ray computed tomography (XCT) and fatigue crack initiation was related to the observed defect distribution. In paper 2, XCT data was used to relate the surface morphology and roughness of post-production treated EBM material to the surface near defect distribution. The connection between this distribution and manufacturing parameter has also been explored. Paper 3 builds on and extends the work presented in paper 1 by including further fatigue testing as well as a method for predicting fatigue life using statistical analysis of the observed defect distribution. The impact of a defect on the fatigue behaviour of the material was found to largely depend on its characteristics and position relative to the surface. Production and post-processing of the material was found to play a role in the severity of this impact. Finally, it was found that a probabilistic statistical analysis can be used to accurately predict the life of the studied material at the tested conditions. / SUDDEN

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The mechanical properties of three austenitic stainless steel alloys, namely 21-6-9, 316L and a modifed 316, fabricated via laser powder bed fusion, have been studied. From the results previously obtained through tensile tests at room and cryogenic temperatures, their strength and ductility were compared against similar conventionally processed materials. The three alloys exhibited a higher or similar strength than their conventional counterparts at both temperatures. In the case of ductility, the additive manufactured 316L was the only alloy that outperformed a conventional 316L at room temperature. At cryogenic temperature, the ductility of the three alloys was either similar or lower. Also, their plastic behavior throughout di˙erent stages of deformation was characterized from their microstructure evolution. At room temperature, a two stage, monotonically descending strain hardening rate was observed, similar to FCC medium stacking fault energy materials. At cryogenic temperatures, four stages of strain hardening rates were observed, caused by a martensite transformation induced by plastic deformation, as it happens in TRIP steels.

Data mining, and in particular topological data analysis (TDA), had proven to be successful inabstracting insights from big arrays of data. This thesis utilizes the TDA software AyasdiTM inorder to improve the accuracy of the energy model of an Electric Arc Furnace (EAF), pinpointingthe causes of a wrong calculation of the steel temperature. Almost 50% of the charges analyzedpresented an underestimation of temperature, while under 30% an overestimation.First a dataset was created by filtering the data obtained by the company. After an initialscreening, around 700 charges built the dataset, each one characterized by 104 parameters. Thedataset was subsequently used to create a topological network through the TDA software. Bycomparing the distribution of each parameter with the distribution of the wrong temperatureestimation, it was possible to identify which parameters provided a biased trend. In particular, itwas found that an overestimation of temperature was caused by an underestimation of themelting energy of materials not having through a melting test. It was also found a possible biasedtrend in some distribution of parameters like %O in steel and slag weight, which it is believedare all connected together. Despite not finding a global solution for the reasons behind theunderestimation of temperature, it is believed that a different settings more focused around thematerials used as scrap mix can highlight more on that subject. In conclusion TDA proved itselfefficient as a problem solving technique in the steel industry.

Today, fastening articles such as screws and nails are treated with different surface coatings to withstand corrosion. The Swedish distributor ESSVE® Produkter AB uses a nano coating called CorrSeal™ for high corrosion protection of their screws. Thermal diffusion galvanization (TDG) is a more environmentally friendly method that the company seeks to use as replacement for the current treatment. This process of zinc diffusion is carried out at around 400 °C for several hours. The aim of the project is to investigate the possibility to surface treat a wood screw using TDG. The elevated temperature is suspected to decrease the hardness of the hardened screw. Therefore, a hardened and tempered screw without surface treatment is sent to a TDG facility. Industrial furnaces are used for similar heat treatments of screws with different hardenings. Both processes are analyzed by evaluating the results of hardness, bending, and microscopy. No immediate correlation between the TDG process and heat treatment in the industrial furnaces is found. Results show that the tested screws softened to a higher degree in the TDG process compared to treatment in the industrial furnaces. The mechanical properties of the tested screws, after the TDG process, are not acceptable. The zinc layer thickness on the screws is uneven yet believed to meet the required demands on corrosion resistance. Results also show that incorporating the TDG process in the tempering step is essential to meet the demands on hardness. Additionally, changing the composition of the material can lead to higher resistance against softening at the elevated temperatures. Further research is however needed to present a screw with sufficient corrosion resistance from the TDG process that will meet the demandson hardness and bending.