University West (Högskolan Väst) aims to contribute to innovation, social development, and a sustainable world through its education and research, particularly in Additive Manufacturing
Production Technology and Work Integrated Learning are our overarching profiles, and we apply those in education and research developed in close collaboration with industry. Collaboration with the outside world is a priority for us, and it results in a high entry rate for our students on the labor market and in more than 80 research projects per year in partnerships with companies.
Within the Department of Engineering Science, University West has a specific research environment in Production Technologies, which includes research portfolios in Industrial Automation, Thermal Spraying, Additive Manufacturing (AM), and Welding.
Additive Manufacturing research
The largest research area today is Additive Manufacturing including both Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) as well as Directed Energy Deposition (DED). It involves a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from three different divisions within the department, including modelling, simulation, process control, metallurgy, mechanical characterization, and Non-Destructive Testing (NDT). You can find more information about our research environment under this link: https://www.hv.se/en/research/production-technology/
The group ‘Welding and welding-based AM’ is one of the largest research groups within the production environment, comprising about 30 people (including senior researchers, PhD students and engineers). The group’s research is categorized into three main areas:
- Metallurgy: Improve the understanding of microstructure, defects, and their effect on mechanical performance on a wide range of materials from nickel-based superalloys, stainless steels including duplex stainless steels, to aluminum and titanium alloys.
- Physical Process Simulation: Development of models to describe heat sources such as electric arc or laser, as well as the melt pool that can be used to predict the formation of porosity, defects, temperature, and stress gradients etc.
- Process Development and Control: Improving process parametrization and automation (sensing, monitoring, and control).
University West (Högskolan Väst) is located in Trollhättan (Sweden) with more than 15 000 students and about 700 employees.
