PROCOMAME

 The Metal Forming Processes (PROCOMAME) group focuses on characterising the plastic deformation behaviour of metals (mostly under hot working conditions) as well as defining processing routes based on severe plastic deformation techniques to obtain metal materials with nanometric grain sizes.

The group develops models that predict hot plastic deformation behaviour as a function of process variables (temperature and strain rate ) and the material's own chemical composition. The studies are complemented by interaction with the forming process by numerical simulation. In this sense the group has worked on rolling forging,  indirect extrusion,  drawing and flow forming .

Nanostructured metal materials are obtained either by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP)  or by mechanical milling techniques. ECAP studies have focused on making materials bifunctional in such a way that the mechanical strength is improved without compromising another property (electrical conductivity, biocompatibility, weldability, etc.). Mechanical milling work has focused on obtaining finer grain sizes followed by warm sintering. In this latter case some research has been addressed to obtain nanometric particles to make them more reactive, such as CaCO₃ and zerovalent iron.

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