About State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die & Mould Technology

State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die & Mould Technology

The State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die & Mould Technology is a national research laboratory at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei, founded in 1991. It works on how materials are shaped, formed and made into products: the simulation of materials processing, the computer-aided design and manufacture of moulds and dies, rapid prototyping and rapid tooling, precision moulding processes and equipment, and the preparation and application of advanced materials. Huazhong University's English introduction states the laboratory's guiding pattern since 1991: it has focused on fulfilling national demands, developing fundamental study, pioneering scientific and technological innovation, promoting the application of research achievements, and leading the development trend in the materials processing field. Its results have been applied in more than 2,000 enterprises, research institutions and colleges, which makes it one of the clearest examples in China of a state key laboratory whose fundamental research is deliberately tied to manufacturing practice.

Founding and setting at Huazhong University

The laboratory was founded in 1991 within Huazhong University of Science and Technology, a university in Wuhan whose engineering disciplines were assembled in the 1950s from programmes drawn from several Chinese universities and which became a national key university under the Ministry of Education. Within the university, the laboratory is closely associated with the School of Materials Science and Engineering, whose own history reaches back to the early 1950s and which lists the laboratory as one of its two national-level research platforms, alongside the National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Digitized Materials Processing Technology and Equipment. The school also hosts a Productivity Promotion Center for Rapid Prototyping Manufacturing of the Ministry of Science and Technology and an Engineering Research Center for Additive Manufacturing Ceramic Materials of the Ministry of Education, so the state key laboratory sits at the centre of a cluster of platforms concerned with the same problem from different angles: how digital design, materials science and manufacturing equipment meet.

People and research platforms

According to the university's introduction, the laboratory has more than 60 researchers, including one member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, three Distinguished Young Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation, three Changjiang Scholars and six overseas experts introduced under the National Thousand Experts Plan, together with some 600 graduate students working in the laboratory. In the period described by the university, more than 60 million yuan was invested to establish four supporting platforms: an advanced material characterisation and performance analysis platform, a precision moulding technology research platform, a material preparation technology research platform and a rapid prototyping technology research platform. Those platforms are significant because materials processing research depends on being able to observe, measure and test what actually happens during forming — temperatures, stresses, microstructures and defects — and the laboratory presents them as providing support for fundamental research, technological innovation, talent cultivation and academic exchange alike.

Materials processing simulation

The first of the laboratory's main research directions is materials processing simulation theory and methodology. Forming processes such as casting, forging, injection moulding and sheet forming are difficult to design by trial and error, because the decisive events — how molten or softened material flows, fills a cavity, cools, solidifies and develops internal stress — cannot be seen directly. Simulation replaces expensive physical trials with computational models that predict filling, temperature fields, deformation and defects before a mould is cut or a production line is committed. The School of Materials Science and Engineering lists computer simulation of materials processing among the research areas in which its work has had domestic and international impact, and simulation is the theoretical foundation on which the laboratory's better-known applied work in mould design and rapid tooling rests: a mould designed on a computer is only trustworthy if the process it will run has itself been modelled credibly.

Computer-aided mould design and manufacturing

The second direction is computer-aided mould design and manufacturing — the CAD and CAE work implied by the words Die & Mould in the laboratory's name. Dies and moulds are the tools that give manufactured products their shape, from automotive panels and appliance housings to precision plastic components, and China’s manufacturing expansion created an enormous demand for moulds that could be designed quickly, accurately and domestically. The laboratory's work in mould CAD and CAE addresses the design of the tool itself and the analysis of how it will perform, linking geometry, material behaviour and process parameters. The school identifies mould CAD/CAE among its areas of recognised impact, alongside materials laser processing and robot-assisted materials processing, and the laboratory's results in this field are among those taken up by the thousands of enterprises and institutions that have applied its research outcomes.

Rapid prototyping, rapid tooling and additive manufacturing

The third direction, rapid prototyping and rapid tooling, is the one for which the laboratory is most widely known. Rapid prototyping builds a physical part layer by layer directly from digital data, and rapid tooling uses the same family of techniques to produce moulds and tools quickly, shortening the cycle between design and production. The laboratory's Rapid Manufacturing Center, supported by the state key laboratory, has undertaken successive national projects including the National Science and Technology Support Plan, National 863 Projects, National Science and Technology Major Projects and National Natural Science Foundation projects, as well as European Union Framework Programme 7 and Horizon 2020 collaboration projects. The centre records more than 160 researchers at different levels, working across materials science, manufacturing, mechanical engineering, computer science, control science and optical engineering. Professor Shi Yusheng is recorded as the current head of the group, having succeeded Professor Huang Shuhuai after his death in 2007, and centre members are recorded as having been granted more than 190 patents and having published more than 20 monographs and textbooks and over 800 research papers, more than 500 of them indexed in the Science Citation Index and Engineering Index databases.

Laser sintering and the 2011 recognition

Within the rapid manufacturing programme, the laboratory's achievement in laser sintering occupies a special place. Selective laser sintering builds parts by using a laser to fuse powdered material layer by layer, allowing complex geometries — including functional parts and tooling inserts — to be produced without conventional cutting or moulding. Huazhong University records that the laboratory's achievement in laser sintering was voted among the top ten science and technology advancements in China in 2011, a national recognition that is also noted in the research record on which this profile is based. The school's research overview likewise lists rapid prototyping among the areas in which Huazhong materials research has made domestic and international impact. Laser sintering illustrates the laboratory's characteristic path from fundamental study to application: research on materials, lasers and process control, developed into equipment and methods that manufacturing enterprises could actually use, and then recognised as a national scientific advance.

Precision moulding and advanced materials preparation

The laboratory's remaining directions complete the chain from material to product. Precision moulding processes and equipment research addresses forming processes in which tolerances are tight and defects are costly, and where the equipment itself — its control, heating, cooling and ejection systems — is part of the science. Advanced material preparation and applications research works at the other end of the process, on the materials to be processed, which at Huazhong University include energy materials, carbon materials, nanomaterials, optoelectronic materials, metallic materials and electronic packaging materials among the school's listed strengths. The laboratory's platforms for material preparation and for precision moulding exist precisely so that new materials and the processes that shape them can be developed together, rather than a material being perfected in isolation and only later found difficult or impossible to form at scale.

Awards, publications and application

The university's summary of the laboratory's record gives a measure of its output. The laboratory has been granted more than ten national awards, including National Natural Science Awards, Technology Innovation Awards and Technology Progress Awards, and more than fifty awards at provincial and ministerial level. It has published more than 1,500 papers indexed in the Science Citation Index and patented over 200 inventions. Most distinctively, its research outcomes have been applied in more than 2,000 enterprises, research institutions and colleges, and have provided effective solutions to many practical problems in production. For a state key laboratory — a category of institution whose formal mission emphasises basic and applied basic research — that breadth of industrial application is notable, and it reflects the nature of materials processing as a field in which a simulation method, a mould design technique or a prototyping process only proves itself when a factory can use it.

International cooperation and place in Chinese manufacturing research

The laboratory's work is also international. The School of Materials Science and Engineering records long-term stable cooperation with renowned academic institutes and companies through joint platforms including the Sino-UK Joint Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Processing Technology, and joint undertaking of international research and development projects such as the European Union's Framework Programme 7 and Horizon 2020 projects, in which the Rapid Manufacturing Center also participated. Founded in 1991, staffed by more than sixty researchers and hundreds of graduate students, distinguished by its laser sintering recognition in 2011 and by the application of its results across thousands of enterprises, the State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die & Mould Technology occupies a central place in China's effort to move its manufacturing from scale toward precision — supplying the simulation methods, mould technologies and rapid manufacturing processes on which that transition depends.