Centro Sviluppo Materiali (CSM) was founded in 1963 by Italy’s major steel manufacturers and end-users to develop steel technologies and their applications. The company subsequently widened the range of its technological interests and skills to cover new materials, products and manufacturing technologies.
Today CSM is an international reference research, development and technology (R&DT) centre, providing innovative steel materials and industrial applications.
CSM’s activities cover the entire cycle of innovation:
- Basic applied research (physical, chemical, mechanical and functional properties, new steels and non-ferrous alloys, innovative coatings, ceramics, and refractories, etc.)
- Design, engineering and processing (on pilot, demonstration and industrial scales)
- Functional prototype production
- Process / system automation and control
- Components and structures’ safety assessments
- Material and component testing
- Environmental issues and materials recycling
More than 300 highly-skilled and trained people support industrial competitiveness and customers’ needs, ensuring the ‘critical mass’ to projects through a broad range of national and transnational collaborative activities.
Metal materials and transformation technologies
CSM deals with almost any technologies related to metal materials and their transformation technologies.
Human skills, labs and full-scale equipment ensure effective R&D from basic research to industry application. Our abilities and facilities include:
- Physical metallurgy (steel, special and light alloys)
- Surface engineering and coating technologies
- Near net shape technologies (semi products and final components)
- Structural integrity (mechanical, chemical, etc.)
- Joining technologies
- Material forming
- High temperature materials
- Automation and control
- Central lab system for supporting R&D activities
Development and energy applications for steels and special alloys
CSM’s research is centred on development and application of steels and special alloys (Ni and Co-base, and light and super-alloys) as well as ceramics and cermets, special surface-engineered products, metal matrices, hybrid composites and inter-metallic materials.
Materials for plants’ high-temperature aggressive environments
CSM has developed vast knowledge and experience regarding materials for high-temperature aggressive environments to match all technological demands.
CSM’s strength is combining material science with manufacturing processing. Starting from steel technology, its know-how has expanded to include very special steels and superalloys – even single crystal and direct-solidified – ceramics and ceramic composites, titanium alloys, and special niche materials.
Metallurgy and advanced microstructural, metallographic and mechanical investigation
The CSM know-how builds on an outstanding capability spanning physical metallurgy, alloy metallurgical design, advanced microstructural, metallographic and mechanical investigation techniques, through-process metallurgy and structural integrity.
Development of ferritic, martensitic and austenitic steels and super alloys
The adoption of a new integrated approach has allowed CSM to speed up the development process of very top-edge ferritic, martensitic, austenitic steels and super alloys (e.g. Ni-base) for pipes, tubes, sheets, forged and fused components which must work at 750°C and over.
Metallurgical and greenfield alloy design
We can provide metallurgical alloy design from in-house models, as well as greenfield alloy design and development from laboratory heat.
Heat treatment design models and diagrams
We offer heat treatment design through in-house thermo-metallurgical models and continuous cooling transformation (CCT), time-temperature-transformation (TTT) and time-temperature-precipitation (TTP) diagrams.
Small and medium-scale mechanical and technological testing
Our mechanical and technological testing at small and medium-scale covers mono and multi-axial tensile; toughness and impact toughness; hardness (up to 1,150°C); low-cycle fatigue (LCF) and high-cycle fatigue (HCF); thermo mechanical fatigue (TMF) up to 1,150°C; fracture mechanics; engineering collapse assessment; etc.
We also provide microstructural analysis, surface analysis and scale investigation.
Creep testing, data assessment and strain models
CSM provides creep testing from 400°C-1,200°C, and creep data assessment using European Creep Collaborative Committee (ECCC) and other international procedures.
We also offer creep strain modelling by coupled metallurgical-micromechanical in-house models, using conventional and non-conventional dedicated experimental techniques (CSMCREEP®).
Other capabilities include:
- Residual life assessment
- Residual stress measurement and numerical assessment by FEM-metallurgical models
- Stress-corrosion and oxidation (including steam and high-temperature oxidation in aggressive environments, high-pressure high-temperature corrosion, and stress corrosion)
- Joining technologies for metals
- Tribological characterisation of materials and components
- Thermo-mechanical simulation and design for forging and rolling
- Development, characterisation and qualification of refractory and ceramics materials
- Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and combustion modelling
- Structural integrity and risk analysis