Manufacturing involves only three types of processes - adding, changing or removing material. 'Metal Bashing' - changing the shape of metal components without removal or additions - is easily over-looked or even derided as the 'ugly duckling' of manufacturing technology, yet continues to be central to UK manufacturing, and always will be: jet engines, medical scanners, cars, high-rise offices and contemporary industrial equipment all depend on metal forming, both to define component geometries and to create the properties such as strength and toughness which determine product performance. Despite great excitement over additive processes such as 3D printing, metal forming will never be replaced, because the high-performance properties of steel, wrought aluminium and other key metals can only be developed as a result of careful control of deformation and temperature over time. Globally we use 25 times more steel than any other metal - in the UK our consumption drives production of 500kg of steel per person per year - and every steel product has been shaped by several metal forming processes. Inevitably, metal forming processes are therefore central to the production of a third of all manufactured exports from the UK which are in total worth over £75bn. However, the tools required for forming metal components are custom-made for each application at great cost, so metal forming is often expensive unless used in mass production, yet the drivers for development of future high-value UK manufacturing require increased flexibility and smaller batch sizes without sacrificing either the accuracy or properties of metal parts. In the past twenty years, several research labs around the world have responded to this challenge and explored the design and development of novel flexible metal forming equipment. However these processes have largely failed to move from the lab into industrial use, due to a lack of precision and a failure to guarantee product microstructure and properties. Recent developments in sensors, actuators, control theory and mathematical modelling suggest that both problems could potentially be overcome by use of closed-loop control, and in work leading to this proposal, we have demonstrated the first online use of a stereo-vision camera in a flexible sheet metal forming process to provide the feedback needed to control the final shape of the sheet precisely. This has shown us that closed-loop control of forming is possible and valuable, but involves a trade-off between product quality, process flexibility and production speed. This proposal therefore brings together four disciplines, previously un-connected in the area of flexible forming, to explore this trade-off and develop the key knowledge underpinning future development of commercially valuable flexible metal forming equipment: mechanical design of novel equipment; control-engineering in both time and space; materials science of metal forming; fast mathematical process modelling. At the heart of our proposal is the ambition to link design, metallurgy and modelling to control engineering, in order to identify the opportunity for developing and applying flexible forming, and to demonstrate it in practice in four well focused case-studies. The proposal comes with £1.2m gearing, including support for five PhD students to work within the project, and substantial commitments of time and trials from Siemens Metals Technologies, Firth Rixson and Jaguar Land Rover. The outcomes of the work will be communicated through publications, demonstrations, workshops for both industry and academic developers, and through an edited book.

The manufacturing and processing of metals to form components is one of the largest industrial sectors and accounts for 46% of all manufactured value, with an economic value to the EEA of Euro 1.3 trillion annually. Material security concerns the access to raw materials to ensure military and economic sufficiency. We will face major future challenges as key elements will be increasingly in short supply with consequent price volatility ("the ticking time bomb"). Equally, many materials rely on strategic elements for which supply is not guaranteed, with rare earth elements being the prime example (central to the performance of magnesium alloys). Metals production consumes about 5% of global energy use and is responsible for an annual emission of over 2Gton of CO2, so efficiency in manufacture can produce significant reductions in environmental impact. The recent report "Material Security: Ensuring resource availability for the UK economy" from the TSB noted "the importance of material security has increased due to limited short-term availability of some raw materials, widespread large increases in raw material prices, oligopolistic industry structures and dependence on a limited number of sometimes politically unstable countries as sources of key materials". Furthermore, "The issue of sustainability has attained unprecedented prominence on both national and international agendas, occupying the minds of businesses and governments as never before... Resource efficiency has a key role to play in mitigating wider issues such as depletion of resources, environmental impact and materials security, and it also contributes significantly to the low-carbon economy." Addressing resource efficiency in metals production and use requires that new metal alloys be developed specifically to reduce reliance on strategic and scarce elements, for recycling and for disruptive manufacturing technologies that minimise waste. The size of the problem is too large to be undertaken by the traditional matrix experiment. Rather, a wide range of state-of-the-art modelling, experimental and processing skills needs to be brought together to target resource efficiency in metallic systems. In the DARE approach we use basic science to come to an understanding of the role of strategically important elements, to design new alloys with greater resource efficiency and to optimise the processing route for the new alloys to give supply chain compression. Unique to the DARE approach is to bring manufacturing into the centre of the alloy design paradigm. The combined themes will tackle key metal alloys, including ultra-high strength, low alloy and nanostructured steel (e.g. for a resource efficient approach to vehicle light weighting to give reduced automotive emissions); titanium alloys and titanium aluminides (e.g. for aerospace applications) and Mg alloys (e.g. in automotive and military applications, for example, cast gear box casings). The research team and their ten industrial partners will deliver actual materials and implementation into industry, moving the resource efficiency agenda from the sphere of policy into the real economy. We will support the growth of the high-value UK speciality metals manufacturing industry by developing and exploiting the DARE approach to the design of alloys that improve the resource efficiency and flexibility with regard to fluctuating material availability of the UK manufacturing economy, addressing the EPSRC grand challenges in transitioning to a low-carbon society. This will help existing UK world-leading industries to expand and manufacture for the future.

This is an application for a Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) from the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester in Advanced Metallic Systems which will be directed by Prof Panos Tsakiropoulos and Prof Phil Prangnell. The proposed DTC is in response to recent reviews by the EPSRC and government/industrial bodies which have indentified the serious impact of an increasing shortage of personnel, with Doctorate level training in metallic materials, on the global competitiveness of the UK's manufacturing and defence capability. Furthermore, future applications of materials are increasingly being seen as systems that incorporate several material classes and engineered surfaces into single components, to increase performance.The primary goal of the DTC is to address these issues head on by supplying the next generation of metallics research specialists desperately needed by UK plc. We plan to attract talented students from a diverse range of physical science and engineering backgrounds and involve them with highly motivated academic staff in a variety of innovative teaching and industrial-based research activities. The programme aims to prepare graduates for global challenges in competitiveness, through an enhanced PhD programme that will:1. Challenge students and promote independent problem solving and interdiscpilnarity,2. Expose them to industrial innovation, exciting new science and the international research community, 3. Increase their fundamental skills, and broaden them as individuals in preparation for future management and leadership roles.The DTC will be aligned with major multidisciplinary research centres and with the strong involvement of NAMTEC (the National Metals Technology Centre) and over twenty companies across many sectors. Learning will be up to date and industrially relevant, as well as benefitting from access to 30M of state-of-the art research facilities.Research projects will be targeted at high value UK strategic technology sectors, such as aerospace, automotive, power generation, renewables, and defence and aim to:1. Provide a multidisciplinary approach to the whole product life cycle; from raw material, to semi finished products to forming, joining, surface engineering/coating, in service performance and recycling via the wide skill base of the combined academic team and industrial collaborators.2. Improve the basic understanding of how nano-, micro- and meso-scale physical processes control material microstructures and thereby properties, in order to radically improve industrial processes, and advance techniques of modelling and process simulation.3. Develop new innovative processes and processing routes, i.e. disruptive or transformative technologies.4. Address challenges in energy by the development of advanced metallic solutions and manufacturing technologies for nuclear power, reduced CO2 emissions, and renewable energy. 5. Study issues and develop techniques for interfacing metallic materials into advanced hybrid structures with polymers, laminates, foams and composites etc. 6. Develop novel coatings and surface treatments to protect new light alloys and hybrid structures, in hostile environments, reduce environmental impact of chemical treatments and add value and increase functionality. 7. Reduce environmental impact through reductions in process energy costs and concurrently develop new materials that address the environmental challenges in weight saving and recyclability technologies. This we believe will produce PhD graduates with a superior skills base enabling problem solving and leadership expertise well beyond a conventional PhD project, i.e. a DTC with a structured programme and stimulating methods of engagement, will produce internationally competitive doctoral graduates that can engage with today's diverse metallurgical issues and contribute to the development of a high level knowledge-based UK manufacturing sector.

Metallic materials are used in an enormous range of applications, from everyday objects, such as aluminium drinks cans and copper wiring to highly-specialised, advanced applications such as nickel superalloy turbine blades in jet engines and stainless steel nuclear reactor pressure vessels. Despite advances in the understanding of metallic materials and their manufacture, significant challenges remain. Research in advanced metallic systems helps us to understand how the structure of a material and the way it is processed affects its properties and performance. This knowledge is essential for us to develop the materials needed to tackle current challenges in energy, transport and sustainability. We must learn how to use the earth's resources in a sustainable way, finding alternatives for rare but strategically important elements and increasing how much material we recycle and reuse. This will partly be achieved through developing manufacturing and production processes which use less energy and are less wasteful and through improving product designs or developing and improving the materials we use. In order to deliver these new materials and processes, industry requires a lot more specialists who have a thorough understanding of metallic materials science and engineering coupled with the professional and technical leadership skills to apply this expertise. The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Metallic Systems will increase the number of metallurgical specialists, currently in short supply, by training high level physical science and engineering graduates in fundamental materials science and engineering in preparation for doctoral level research on challenging metallic material and manufacturing problems. By working collaboratively with industry, while undertaking a comprehensive programme of professional skills training, our graduates will be equipped to be tomorrow's research leaders, knowledge workers and captains of industry.