ICDT

• Materials Synthesis

• Materials Testing and Characterization

• Alloy manufacturing

• Materials Synthesis

This field deals with the study of the possibilities to obtain new special materials for the current top industries. The main activity areas are metallic materials synthesis, ceramic materials synthesis and MMC composite materials synthesis. The equipment in the centre enables experiments conducted on metallic materials by melting or other special materials for the auto industry or the machine building industry as well as for the modern branches of aeronautical industry, electronics and medicine. Modern manufacturing technologies use mostly powders (metallic, ceramic or polymeric, and others), which can be obtained in our research centre in the planetary ball milling machine – last generation equipment. Apart from manufacturing powders, the equipment can assist the production of special powders by mechanical alloying.

• Materials Testing and Characterization

This field is concerned with the testing and characterization of the materials obtained in the research centre and in other centres or manufacturing units. The activity main areas are mechanical testing, thermal analysis, metallographic analysis and tribological characterization.

Mechanical testing of materials can be carried out (tensile, compression and flexure testing) both at ambient temperature as well as at negative temperatures (up to minus 150oC) or high temperatures (1000oC). Those determinations are imposed especially for the materials that are used in top industries – automotive industry, aeronautics, medicine, and others. On very small samples (tens of milligrams), thermal analysis is able to provide valuable information about the behaviour of the material under circumstances of heating and cooling. The phase transformations occurring in the material between the span of temperatures taken into account can be thus determined, the crystallization temperature, the vitrification temperature, and others. The tribological characterization of materials has the purpose of gathering information about the friction and tear. The equipment in the lab C08 also allows for gathering information concerning hardness, elastic modulus, and scratch resistance. The tests are made on thin/thick coatings of inorganic and metallic materials, magnetic materials, ceramics or polymers, materials for which testing is needed, depending on the solutions found.

• Alloy manufacturing

This field of research is related to the possibility of obtaining diverse solutions using the alloy manufacturing technologies, like selective laser sintering (SLS) or material extrusion or fused filament fabrication (FFF). Alloy manufacturing has gained important segments of today’s market, affecting the traditional production processes. In the research centre C08 theoretical and experimental studies are conducted regarding the use of the AM technologies in diverse branches of industry, such as automotive, medical, electrotechnical and others. The range of materials for the specimens is diverse – plastic, metallic, rubber or even polystyrene materials (for cast models with gasification moulds).