Brunel University's casting techniques could lead to lighter and recyclable car components

They aim to scale up research at Brunel University London’s Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Techniques (BCAST) and the Liquid Metal Engineering Centre led by Prof Zhongyun Fan.

He and his team have shown it is possible to condition molten aluminium alloys using melt shearing to produce castings with a much finer grain structure, so car components can be made up to 40 per cent lighter.

BCAST deputy director Dr Ian Stone told The Engineer: “One of the problems with liquid metals is that they contain oxide, so their surface oxidises and that oxide gets entrained within the liquid metal. It tends to act as a crack, so the industry spends a lot of time trying to remove oxide.”

“The high shear process applies very high shear forces to the liquid metal and that disperses those oxide films into very fine sub-micron particles,” he added.