A four-month student internship has evolved into a four-year industry-university collaboration supported by Automotive Partnership Canada (APC) to help Canada's largest auto supplier produce better quality parts, and more of them per minute, all while reducing production costs.

Brampton-based Cosma International has already optimized many steps in hot stamping die quenching, a process in which steel sheets are heated and then simultaneously formed into shape and quenched, resulting in ultra-strong automotive parts. Uniform, controlled heating is essential to ensure the quality of the stamped parts.

As parts become increasingly complex, however, with different materials, coatings, thickness or structures, it becomes more difficult to heat each part uniformly. The current trial and error approach slows production, wastes materials and compromises the part's crash performance. Cosma is looking to experts at the University of Waterloo help improve their process.

"This project is developing a simplified computerized tool that we can use to plug in every blank (boron steel) thickness and length so we can model and predict for every part we manufacture, and ultimately produce parts with less material and in less time," says Dan Kennedy, General Manager at Promatek Research Centre, the R&D unit of Cosma.

"The technology will determine how much energy is used and how fast the process is," says lead researcher Dr. Kyle Daun, a radiation heat transfer expert at the University of Waterloo. "That's information that will help Cosma better predict how much a part is going to cost."

Driving down energy costs

Innovations in hot stamping auto parts are making it possible to manufacture vehicles with less material and in less time compared to other fabrication techniques, dramatically reducing manufacturing costs, while producing cars that are lighter, more fuel-efficient and more crashworthy.

But to fully exploit these benefits, all steps in the production process need to be optimized. Cosma recognized it needed to find a better way to modify furnace conditions during the stamping conditions.

An opportunity to fix the problem arose in 2012 when Cosma's R&D unit was working with the University of Waterloo on another APC project. As luck would have it, they were introduced to Dr. Kyle Daun, an expert in industrial furnaces.

"We immediately thought: Here's a guy with the expertise who might be able to help us," says Kennedy.

It didn't take long before Promatek recruited one of Daun's Master's students as an intern to work on the problem. By early 2013, Matthew Twynstra had produced the first computer models characterizing the material changes happening inside boron steel blanks when they're heated and pinpointing optimum heater settings for producing a more uniformed metal temperature.

"The research results were pretty impressive," says Kennedy. "What they predicted in the models is what we got in tests using a batch furnace. That led us to believe, wow, if we could do this on our main roller hearth furnaces then we could adjust temperatures in each zone to account for material differences and really improve the temperature uniformity."

The new technology will also drive down energy costs. With temperatures exceeding 900°C, roller hearth furnaces consume huge amounts of energy and Magna operates 22 of these 30-metre long ovens at plants world-wide, including in China and Europe where energy prices are rising fast.

Key to the success of this four-year project is the diversity of the research team, including experts in radiation heat transfer, design optimization and metallurgy.

"I never expected to be working with metallurgists when I came to Waterloo," explains Daun, the principal investigator on the project. "I can certainly figure out the temperature distribution in the furnace, but how does that heat change the steel and the special aluminum silicon coating on that metal? We need a multidisciplinary team to figure that out."

The metallurgy expert on the project, Dr. Mary Wells, says having different sciences working together also benefits the graduate students on the team. "Most of the problems in industry today are multidisciplinary so you need employees who have a broad skill set and who have worked in a real industrial environment."

Kennedy says where their company lacks in-house expertise to solve a problem; it routinely turns to academia for assistance.

"The University of Waterloo is usually our first go-to group if we come up against something we don't know or need help with," he says. "It's amazing to find the experts you need and an excellent student work force all under one roof. And the support we receive from Automotive Partnership Canada helps make these collaborations possible. From a business perspective it's an efficient way to get results."