Materials Research

Material issues play an important role at IHC Merwede. Materials research contributes to the innovation of our products by developing advanced materials for new technologies and by lowering the cost and enhancing the performance of more established technologies.

The material engineers at MTI Holland are constantly looking for new solutions in areas such as casting, heat treatment, wear resistance and corrosion resistance.

Virtual prototyping creates a vital link between fundamental principles of materials, processing parameters and actual manufacturing technologies. Virtual prototyping will be introduced for casting processes as well as welding and heat treatment, to gain considerable benefits during the manufacturing process.

During numerical simulation of welding and heat treatment a dedicated finite element method (FEM) simulation package is used to predict stress levels and deformation range after heat treatment of castings and welding of large ship structures. These simulation techniques lead to a decrease in the reject rate after heat treatment and to the reduction of manual work related to flame strengthening of welded structures.

The development of a special microstructure containing nano-size strengthening particles in a hard matrix makes it possible to apply innovative heat treatment technologies, like isothermal heat treatment, with the goal of achieving a unique set of material properties (fracture toughness vs. hardness and tensile strength) for different materials. The possibilities of applying such a heat treatment to different cast steels and cast irons are currently being researched. A spin-off of this research is the development of the so called “superbainitic” materials, which have exceptional strength levels and fracture toughness values.

Wear-resistant materials and wear life predictionResearch in this area of wear-resistant materials and wear life prediction is performed in the MTI laboratories. Part of this research is done in cooperation with third parties. The expertise gained from this research is directly applicable to improvement of existing materials, the development of new, more advanced materials, for dredging applications and life cycle support.   Adhesive bondingTogether with several external parties such as shipyards, classification bureaus and research institutes, MTI Holland is researching the possibilities of adhesive bonding in shipbuilding. This project aims to investigate the possibilities of avoiding welding in some cases in order to reduce deformation and heat input during assembly and rework. Research is performed under water, at the waterline and above the water.