Embedding materials engineering in advanced manufacturing with light alloys
LightForm is a 5 year multidisciplinary project with core support from the The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) programme grant scheme, led by The University of Manchester with partners at University of Cambridge and Imperial College, London.
Our vision is to provide the enabling science that will allow UK industry to achieve a step-change in the performance of the next generation of wrought, light-alloy, formed components, and innovate in the move to a more sustainable, circular, economy and digital integration in manufacturing.
We will achieve this by embedding precision materials engineering into advanced forming and forging processes.
By looking at manufacturing and materials engineering fully holistically, we will seek to take advantage of win-win synergies where you can simultaneously form a shape and dynamically engineer properties. This will allow us to overcome the current conflict between the demand for higher performance materials and the negative effect this has on reducing manufacturability and increasing costs.
