In
1998 the Technical Task Force 2 „High Strength Steel“
of the European Pressure Vessel Research Committee (EPERC)
decided to focus the discussions of the group into a new
5th framework research proposal.
A consortium of 17 members in total which represents steel
manufacturers, pressure vessel designer, producers and
end-users together with industrial founded research
institutes and universities succeeded with the RTD
proposal for a 3 year project.
The project
will focus on the extension of the European leadership in
pressure vessel and steel manufacturing by utilising the
full potential of new modern steels for safe design.
Manufacturing
of PV is a world wide market and the decision to buy a PV
is mainly governed by
- economical
aspects (e.g. low working costs)
- technical
aspects (high technology and quality workmanship)
- regulatory
aspects (safety requirements against catastrophical
failures)
The
European strategy to encounter this challenge is to
improve their competitiveness by developing the technical
knowledge to use the new high potential steels like TMCP,
HSS-QT and DUPLEXsteels for economical PV-design and
manufacturing.
Although
these steels which have been successfully developed by the
European steel industry during the past 3 decades are
available today, the full utilisation is restricted mainly
due to a lack of experience with these steels. To overcome
this obstacles which today are part of the new European PV
design code EN 13445 the research project will work on the
application modern design by analysis and structural
integrity calculation methods and validate this methods
with extensive experimental tests for the practical use.
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