ToughSteel

Valorisation, dissemination and awareness about the concept of fracture toughness, as well as its extension to other applications in the steel sector and to other industries working with Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS).

The ToughSteel project involves and engages the main stakeholders around the steel sector with the objective to promote, disseminate and transfer the know-how acquired in previous projects about the use of fracture toughness as a tool to address cracking problems in forming and in-service performance of AHSS.

The main objectives of the project are:

• Collect, organize and analyse the fracture toughness data measurements (from previous RFCS projects and open literature) to create a database.
• Provide an industrial guideline to describe methodologies of fracture toughness evaluations in sheet metals, based on the research developed in previous RFCS projects, for a more efficient fracture and crashworthiness prediction in different industrial applications.
• Develop different communication and dissemination actions aimed to promote the project and the application of fracture toughness as a design material property.
• Organise webinars, academic and industrial workshops, online courses and educational programs to transfer the knowledge acquired.
• Standardisation activities to facilitate the acceptance and utilisation by the market of the developed solutions.
• Organise “Problems Solving” sessions focused on case-studies to show how fracture toughness can be used to understand and solve crack-related industrial problems.

The different activities promoted by the project are addressed to a wide audience including academic institutions, steel producers, part-makers, and end-users of sheet metal products.

ToughSteel consortium is formed by Eurecat, which coordinates and participates in the project through the Metallic and Ceramic Materials Unit and the Communication and Digital Marketing Unit, together with Luleå Tekniska Universitet, the Catholic University of Louvain, Centro Ricerche Fiat, the Jernkontoret, UNESID – Unión de Empresas Siderúrgicas and UNE as a standardisation organism.