Forgemasters trials hollow ingot casting

25 November 2010

Sheffield Forgemasters of the UK has announced the successful conclusion of casting trials of a pioneering hollow steel ingot, which could help the company capitalise on key power generation sectors, including nuclear energy. 

 

The recently cast hollow ingot (Image: Sheffield Forgemasters)

The 160-tonne ingot was cast at the company's Brightside Lane foundry in Sheffield. Producing such a large hollow ingot could enable the company to make highly efficient cylindrical forgings by removing many of the costly time- and energy-intensive processes required to create a tubular shaped forging from a solid steel ingot.

 

Sheffield Forgemasters said that casting the hollow ingot has taken more than 12 months of investment by the its research and development (R&D) facility to refine a practice which is only adopted by a select few companies worldwide.

 

Jesus Talamantes-Silva, head of the company's R&D department, said: "This process is an exciting development for Forgemasters and aims to reduce many of the costs and processes involved in manufacturing some of the critical forgings required by the power generation industry."

 

He added, "We are in the early stages of refining the process of casting a hollow ingot, but the results so far are extremely promising with the first ingot now cast and stripped from the mould."

 

However, Talamantes-Silva noted, "We have other stages to go through before we can say that the process has been fully trialled, including destructive testing, to examine the material properties and structural characteristics of the ingot."

 

The process is not entirely new to Forgemasters as hollow ingots were manufactured at Brightside Lane prior to 1980 – but the technology for creating them from scratch has changed greatly.

 

Hollow ingots will enable Forgemasters to produce cylindrical forgings, which are used for components including transition cones used in civil nuclear power steam generators and waste casks for used nuclear fuel, utilising a maximum efficiency process with less heating cycles per component and less waste material.

 

Talamantes-Silva said, "Establishing the correct parameters for a casting of this kind are highly complex and require processes such as finite element analysis and casting solidification modelling to achieve tangible results." He added, "However, our efforts in preparatory research mean that many of the potential failings when committing to an entirely new production process are reduced and addressed before we start costly processes such as casting and pouring steel for the actual component."

 

In June 2010, as part of spending cuts imposed by the newly-elected UK collation government, it was announced that a long-awaited £80 million ($126 million) loan to Sheffield Forgemasters to build a press big enough to produce the largest nuclear components would not be made.

 

The credit facility from the UK Strategic Investment Fund would have been hugely significant towards the development, with investment from Forgemasters itself and Westinghouse making up the rest of the £140 million ($220 million) cost. Forgemasters would have installed a 15,000 tonne press capable of handling 500-600 tonne ingots and producing the largest reactor pressure vessels. At the time of the loan's cancellation, which the company said was a "huge disappointment," Forgemasters reaffirmed its desire to develop in the nuclear sector and to seek alternative funding sources for the press.

 

Researched and written 

by World Nuclear News 

 

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