The col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Arcelor­Mit­tal lab­o­ra­to­ry and the Rober­val lab­o­ra­to­ry goes back a long way. Ini­tial­ly, they main­ly con­cerned the numer­i­cal sim­u­la­tion of flat steel form­ing and met­al­lur­gy. They then devel­oped towards the prob­lems of weld­ing high-strength steels.

The impe­tus giv­en by the Hauts-de-France region to the cre­ation of joint university/industry lab­o­ra­to­ries led Arcelor­Mit­tal to recon­sid­er the form of this part­ner­ship. “We thought it would be inter­est­ing to broad­en the sub­jects of our col­lab­o­ra­tion with UTC’s Rober­val Lab­o­ra­to­ry and to make it a long-term project in order to take full advan­tage of the lab­o­ra­to­ry’s spe­cial­ist skills. We want­ed to have a pow­er­ful force at our dis­pos­al to fur­ther devel­op key tech­ni­cal points relat­ing to the weld­ing of third-gen­er­a­tion high-strength steels and to addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing through research work, PhD the­ses and post-doc­tor­ates. The indus­tri­al stakes are high, hence this human and finan­cial com­mit­ment on the part of Arcelor­Mit­tal,” empha­sis­es Fran­cis Schmit, head of the Assem­bly & Mul­ti-Mate­ri­als depart­ment with­in Arcelor­Mit­tal Glob­al R&D in Mon­tataire and co-direc­tor of Fusemetal.

The research staff at the Mon­tataire lab­o­ra­to­ry are ful­ly involved in defin­ing the research top­ics and mon­i­tor­ing the work, in con­junc­tion with the PhD the­sis direc­tor. They reg­u­lar­ly inter­vene to pro­vide tools or skills from the research cen­tre, when nec­es­sary. The com­pa­ny is also the employ­er of the PhD stu­dents who ben­e­fit from a CIFRE con­tract from the ANRT. The research axes are co-direct­ed by pro­fes­sors from the UTC (Mohamed Rachik, Pierre Feis­sel) and by engi­neers from the Mon­tataire lab­o­ra­to­ry (Sadok Gaied, Patrick Duroux and Gilles Brun). The involve­ment of the com­pa­ny is also financial.

Advocating a circular economy

One the­sis has already been com­plet­ed. Five oth­ers are still in progress. The the­sis was pre­sent­ed in July. “This work is clear­ly a suc­cess and the results are already being used by our organ­i­sa­tion. The doc­tor­al stu­dent, Hélé­na Lejault, has been hired and works in the assem­bly depart­ment of our lab­o­ra­to­ry. We can there­fore ful­ly ben­e­fit from the skills and knowl­edge acquired by Hélé­na dur­ing her the­sis,” announces Fran­cis Schmit at Arcelor­Mit­tal, where UTC stu­dents are appre­ci­at­ed for their mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary tech­ni­cal train­ing and their abil­i­ty to tack­le new sub­jects and the prob­lems of human and project management.

“Indeed, in the lab­o­ra­to­ry of Mon­tataire, the hir­ing of UTC grad­u­ates is reg­u­lar, but we regret that it is too rare, for lack of can­di­dates, with regard to the numer­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties offered by the research cen­tre of Mon­tataire and more gen­er­al­ly with­in the Arcelor­Mit­tal group, he con­cludes. The spe­cial­i­ties sought by the group are very diverse: in man­u­fac­tur­ing, in com­mer­cial devel­op­ment, in prod­uct research, process­es and appli­ca­tion of steels. A key issue for the group is the decar­bon­i­sa­tion of steel­mak­ing. It is impor­tant to bear in mind that steel is eas­i­ly recy­clable and is there­fore an ide­al mate­r­i­al for a cir­cu­lar econ­o­my. So, to the stu­dents read­ing this arti­cle, “don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact us for an intern­ship or a job.”