EuroStir ^® - summary

By: Stephan W Kallee ^[1] and Heidi B Dyson ^[2] (both TWI)

Background

The EuroStir ^® project on European Industrialisation of friction stir welding ^[3] (FSW) began in December 2000, and a group of 24 collaborators are now establishing close links.

EuroStir ^® is a Eureka project with the project number !2430. It has been proposed and defined by the collaborators and is part-funded by local governments. It will be led by industrial partners from international industrial companies, and the main project management committees are chaired by a small Danish FSW job shop (DanStir) and a large European material supplier (Corus). In this project six research institutes from Eureka member countries teamed up to develop high-tech products, production methods and services for an international market ^[4] .

In the first six months collaborators from the following Eureka countries signed-up for the EuroStir ^® project, which is open for further participants from Eureka countries:

• United Kingdom
• Germany
• Denmark
• France
• Poland
• Sweden

Fig.1. EuroStir ® signing ceremony at the House of Commons © 2000, TWI Ltd

On 1 March 2001 representatives of the 12 Main Collaborators met at the House of Commons in London for the signing ceremony of the EuroStir ^® Main Collaboration Agreement ( Fig.1). Anne Campbell (the UK Member of Parliament for Cambridge) hosted the event and stated ^[5] : "We shall all benefit from this project. Good commercial exploitation of friction stir welding will feed manufacturing industry and help to maintain the prosperity of the UK as well as other European countries. The automotive and aerospace industries are already making full use of friction stir welding. The shipbuilding industry and makers of manned spacecraft are certainly future users of the process. This is a good example of the sort of co-operation that is so desperately needed here. It's what we need to do in Europe if we are to stay ahead of the rest of the world."

Introduction

The project's focus is the industrial exploitation of friction stir welding. In other words, getting the process out of the laboratories and adopted by industry. Some of the successful users of FSW have done a significant amount of internal laboratory experiments before applying the FSW process in production. The EuroStir ^® project aims to provide sufficient information and training so that new FSW users can use the process without further internal R&D work.

International publications claim that it was still difficult to choose the appropriate FSW tool designs and to extrapolate the optimum welding parameters. As a result of participating in the EuroStir ^® project, the collaborators should obtain sufficient data to enable their machine operators to choose the appropriate welding conditions without the need of a calculator. Similar to the laser welding job shops that were established in the 1980s, it can be predicted that a number of small and medium sized companies (SMEs) will provide FSW subcontract work for large companies. At the end of EuroStir ^® at least 50% of the participating SMEs should provide services to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Objectives of the reference period

The objectives for the first six months of the project were as follows:

• To issue Collaboration Agreements
• To initiate the dissemination of the advantages of the EuroStir ^® know-how
• To get the Main Collaboration Agreement signed by 12 Main Collaborators
• To obtain signatures to the User Collaboration Agreement from at least 12 additional international small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and large companies which are termed in this project as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)
• To propose a detailed work programme of each Task to the Technical Committee
• To transfer background information on tool designs and clamping

Studies for UK SMEs and industrialisation studies

Fig.2. Demonstration of using Witte [6] vacuum clamping tables for FSW at TWI © 2000, TWI Ltd

Collaborating SMEs that are based in the UK can conduct up to 5 days of free studies during the first 2½ years of the project (up to a cumulative total of 85 days). Each EuroStir ^® collaborator can use TWI's new FSW facility in industrialisation studies for up to 20 days at a special day rate of £1000 including a technician. The collaborator has to provide sections of workpieces for weld assessment and write a report releasing selected generic data to the Project Steering Group (PSG).

Full size demonstrator parts or pre-production prototypes can be welded using TWI's new SuperStir ^TM machine, which has a vacuum clamping table ( Fig.2). This large size machine can be used to produce for example:

• Aircraft wings and fuselages and spacecraft components
• Full-size automotive floor pans or side panels
• Decks and bulkheads for yachts and high speed ferries
• Corrosion resistant window frames or façades

EuroStir ^® collaborators

The following companies signed the Collaboration Agreements prior to 31 May 2001:

Table: Collaborators who signed up by 31 May 2001
UC = User Collaborator, PSG = Project Steering Group

No	Company	Country	Size	Status
1	Airbus Deutschland	DE	OEM	PSG
2	Airbus UK	UK	OEM	PSG
3	Blacks Equipment	UK	SME	UC
4	Briggs	UK	OEM	UC
5	Corus	UK	OEM	PSG
6	DanStir	DK	SME	PSG
7	DLR - German Aerospace Center	DE	RTO	PSG
8	EADS CCR	FR	OEM	PSG
9	ESAB	SE	OEM	PSG
10	Force	DK	RTO	PSG
11	FWS Engineering	UK	SME	UC
12	Gatwick Fusion	UK	SME	UC
13	GKSS	DE	RTO	PSG
14	Hawtal Whiting	UK	OEM	UC
15	Inst Spawalnictwa	PL	RTO	PSG
16	Institute de Soudure	FR	RTO	PSG
17	Metalair Feldbinder	UK	SME	UC
18	Promweld (awaiting PSG approval)	UK	SME	UC
19	Raiser	DE	SME	PSG
20	Snecma Moteurs	FR	OEM	UC
21	Special Metals Fabrication (awaiting PSG approval)	UK	SME	UC
22	Thompson	UK	SME	PSG
23	Triton Tooling	UK	SME	UC
24	TWI	UK	RTO	PSG

Reporting

Reports to the Technical Committee will be made by the Task Leaders according to their own house style. However, the 6-monthly confidential Newsletters to the User Group will be edited using a EuroStir ^® template, which uses the advanced features of Microsoft ^® Word, such as hyperlinks to WWW pages, automated endnotes and coloured photographs. The layout is more similar to modern conference papers, magazine articles or corporate web sites than to more formal scientific reports.

Company Profiles will be attached to the Newsletters. These include some public domain information about the participating companies, their key people, the benefits of the collaborator's products and possibly even some tourist information about the locations of the next meetings. Parts of the Newsletters and Company Profiles will be published on the EuroStir ^® website, subject to approval by the Project Steering Group.

Achievements

Since the project commenced on 1 December 2000 the Collaborators have achieved the following:

• The first Technical Committee Meeting was held in Hamburg on 22 May 2001, during which the work programme of all 6 Tasks was discussed
• GKSS demonstrated robotic FSW of magnesium alloys and robotic friction stir spot welding of automotive aluminium sheets
• TWI, DanStir and EADS/Institut de Soudure ordered three ESAB SuperStir ^TM machines which will be used for Feasibility and full-size Industrialisation Studies

Dissemination achievements

• The Launch Meeting was held with 47 attendees from 30 organisations from 6 European countries
• Twelve organisations signed the Main Collaboration Agreement on 1 March 2001, which commits them to be representatives in the Project Steering Group
• Twelve more companies signed the User Collaboration Agreement
• A Polish seminar with two EuroStir ^® presentations was held at Instytut Spawalnictwa in January 2001 and was attended by 45 delegates ^[7]
• A www.eurostir.co.uk web site has been allocated to display public information for promoting the services of the participating SMEs and will be fully operational by 30 November 2001
• TWI was granted the EuroStir ^® trademark in the United Kingdom and will extend the filing to other Eureka countries, especially those participating in this project
• A number of enquiries for Industrialisation Studies has been received

Links and references

1. Project Manager of EuroStir ^® is Stephan Kallee (TWI),
   stephan.kallee@twi.co.uk
   
   
2. Project Administrator of EuroStir ^® is Heidi Dyson (TWI),
   heidi.dyson@twi.co.uk
   
   
3.   Friction stir welding (FSW)
   
   
4. Barham P: 'Collaboration in Eureka projects - an overview of Eureka'. EuroStir ^® Launch Meeting, Great Abington (UK), 5 December 2000
   
   
5.   'Giant contract causes a stir in Parliament'
   
   
6.   www.horst-witte.de
   
   
7. Nicholas E D, Kallee S W and Brózda J: 'Zgrezwanie tarciowe z mieszaniem materialu zgrzeiny - 10 lat od wynalezienia procesu'. Seminar Nowosci w technologii oraz w urzadzeniach do zgrzewania metalli, Institut Spawalnictwa, Gliwice, 24 January 2001.

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