Niobio Award for CEIT

2003/05/19 Agirre Ruiz de Arkaute, Aitziber - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Teknologia

This group will receive the international award on 10 June for its research of great importance in the steel sector. The objective has been to improve the quality of steel with niobium, identifying the problems that occurred in the process of making steel and clarifying its solution.

In fact, the constant development of new industrial materials has generated strong competition. Therefore, researchers are studying the structure and behavior of traditional materials to improve their quality and not lose prominence among new materials.

In the case of steel it is normal to mix it with metals such as niobium. Metals such as titanium, vanadium or molybdenum are added, always in very small quantities. These mixtures or alloys are sufficient to obtain better quality steel, as it considerably increases the strength or solidity of the steel. This allows you to create lighter structures without losing resistance. This type of steel is used in construction and automobile, for example. These alloys make it possible to use narrower beams in construction and lighter steel plates in car manufacturing. This lightness, for example, considerably reduces the consumption of cars.

This group of researchers from CEIT and the University of Navarra are also investigating with niobium to increase the resistance of steel. Niobium is used to improve the mechanical properties of steel, being enough an increase of 0.03-0.04% to bend its resistance.

However, as new ways of processing steel are developing with niobium, the group has encountered problems that no one has so far identified. That is why they have received the award. In the opinion of this group of researchers, increasing niobium has detected a lack of homogeneity in steel. During the processing of steel it has been observed in some cases that niobium produces heterogeneity in the steel microstructure. That is, differences in size have been observed between the crystals that make up the steel in different zones, which generates weak or more fragile points. This sometimes causes defective steel to occur. However, CEIT researchers have studied all the variables of the steel processing process and found the right conditions to correct the error.

The award received for this work is not the first that the team has received from the London Institute of Materials. Two years ago, the same organization awarded the work done with another metal, vanadium, which increases the resistance of steel. During this period, the cultivation or processing of vanadium steel was studied at temperatures below the usual ones. In this way, more precise parts are obtained, since the higher the temperature, the more the size of the steel parts changes. The delivery of both awards is very important for the team. In fact, CEIT is the first global research group that has achieved it, becoming a benchmark in the steel sector.