Steel is the backbone of modern society, serving as the foundation for many industries globally. The widespread growth of the steel industry is tied directly to the Industrial Revolution and since then this growth has not stopped; global crude steel production was 1.7 billion tonnes in 2017. Over the years both steel materials and the processes we use to make them have been researched and developed continuously, but a lack of government support for industry meant new investment in existing steel manufacturing infrastructure was limited. In recent decades huge amounts of steel, sold cheaper than we can make it in the UK, have flooded the market. This comes primarily from Europe and Asia. In order to compete in this key industry the UK has to shift its focus from large volumes of commodity material to smaller volumes of high value-added material, and to achieve this in both an environmentally and economically sustainable way. This has been accepted in the industry but low profit margins have meant there are no funds available to invest in large capital projects and enable transformation on the required scale with current technologies. This ambitious project, AM-Steel, aims to start to address this challenge by providing the UK steel industry with the knowledge, technology and competitive advantage required to kick-start a transformation towards digital technologies - specifically additive manufacturing (AM). The AM process is currently used in high-tech and high-value industries including Aerospace and Medical, where the design freedom and high material utilisation makes the economic benefit easily seen, and is experiencing unprecedented revenue growth of 40% year-on-year for the past 5 years. With the maturing of this technology, AM has started to spread into a broader range industry sectors, where steel is the dominant material. It is projected that from 2020 steel will have the largest market share in the metal AM sector, overtaking Titanium, Nickel, and Aluminium alloys. AM requires high quality metal alloy powders. There are less than ten steel alloys widely available as powders for AM, mostly stainless and tool steels, compared to the thousands of alloys available to traditional productions routes (such as casting or forging and subtractive machining). This project will use the wealth of metallurgical knowledge in the steel industry, advanced thermodynamic modelling, and world-leading characterisation facilities - all available in the UK - to create a range of bespoke steel alloy compositions tailored to realise the enhanced processability at lower cost for general engineering applications, by utilising the unique benefits of the AM process. AM-Steel will establish AM technology capability in the UK steel industry; enabling the industry to produce high value-added powder materials for AM, improving the productivity of the industry's heritage assets using these technologies, and transforming the industry and its supply chain through digital manufacturing. AM-Steel is strategically aligned with the Liberty GREENSTEEL policy: to serve local markets using local materials; produced using green, renewable long-term sources of power; re-invigorating the subsequent engineering supply chain and delivering innovative solutions that provide a competitive advantage to customers. AM-Steel will contribute greatly to Liberty's target to be carbon neutral by 2030.

The DigitalMetal CDT is born out to meet a national, strategic need for training a new generation of technical leaders able to lead digital transformation of metals industry & its supply chain with the objective of increasing agility, productivity & international competitiveness of the metals industry in the UK. The metals industry is a vital component of the UK's manufacturing economy and makes a significant contribution to key strategic sectors such as construction, aerospace, automotive, energy, defence and medical, directly contributing £20bn to UK GDP, and underpins over £190bn manufacturing GDP. Without a new cadre of leaders in digital technologies, equipped to transform discoveries and breakthroughs in metals and manufacturing (M&M) technologies into products, the UK risks entering another cycle of world-leading innovation but losing the benefits arising from exploitation to more capable and better prepared global competitors. The evolution to Industry 4.0 and Materials 4.0 coupled with unprecedented opportunities of "big data" enable the uptake of artificial intelligence/deep learning (AI/DL) based solutions, making it feasible to implement zero-defects, right first-time manufacturing/zero-waste (ZDM/ZW) concepts and meet the environmental-, sustainable- and societal- challenges. However, to fully take advantage of these opportunities, two critical challenges must be addressed. First, as user-identified problems in the metals industry that spans domains (from discoveries in M&M to their up-scaling and deployment in high volume/value production), urgently needed a new breed of engineers with skills to traverse these domains by going beyond the classical PhD training, i.e., T-model signifying transferable skills and in-depth knowledge in a single domain, to a new Pi-model raining that is underpinned by transferable skills and in-depth knowledge that transverse across domains i.e.,: AI/DL and engineering (M&M) to enable rapid exploitation of discoveries in M&M. Second, while AI/DL domain provides data-driven correlation analysis critical for product performance and defect identification, it is insufficient for root cause analysis (causality). This necessitates training on integrating data-driven with physics-based models of product & production, which is currently lacking in the metals industry. The Midlands region, as the top contributor to UK Gross Value Added through metals and metal products, with world-leading companies, such as Rolls-Royce and Constellium, LEAR and their customers, underpinned through collaborations with the five Midlands universities: Birmingham, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham & Warwick, is uniquely positioned to integrate research and industry resources and train a new cadre of engineers & researchers on the Pi-model to address user-needs. Our vision is to train future leaders able to accelerate the exploitation of M&M discoveries using digital technology to enable defect-free, right first-time manufacturing at reduced costs, digitise to decarbonise, and implement fuel switching in metals manufacturing industry.