STIRWELD

GANIL and STIRWELD (35 – Rennes), a company specialising in friction stir welding (FSW) solutions, are working closely together to identify areas of common interest and develop pojects in this field.

Licence

As part of its research and development activities at GANIL, the CEA (GANIL’s supervisory authority) has developed an invention for manufacturing aluminium vacuum chamber tubes equipped with new hardened flanges. The friction stir welding process is the essential technique used in this innovation.

This invention, entitled ‘Vacuum chamber assembly component and method for manufacturing the assembly component’, is the subject of a priority patent in France and was filed in April 2016. In 2019, an application for extension was also filed in the United States.

The company STIRWELD, involved in the implementation of the prototype for this invention, wished to obtain a licence for the industrial and commercial exploitation of the patents protecting the invention in order to expand its product range.

In May 2022, the CEA and STIRWELD signed a five-year patent licence agreement to develop aluminium vacuum chamber tubes as a commercial product.

This patent licence agreement is part of a technology transfer process promoting the industrial exploitation of innovation.

Collaboration:

Following this patent licence, the two partners decided to combine their expertise by embarking on an ambitious collaboration.

This collaboration encompasses all developments related to particle accelerator and vacuum technologies linked to new uses of FSW welding identified by GANIL and STIRWELD. Upon signing this partnership, the partners identified a number of areas of interest that would be conducive to deepening and broadening their collaboration.  

The first area of focus was the design and construction of an aluminium dipole vacuum chamber, welded by friction stir welding. The objectives of this study were to examine the technical and economic feasibility of this type of chamber in comparison with the stainless steel technologies traditionally used.

Following this collaborative discussion, an aluminium vacuum chamber was installed at the centre of the NFS magnetic dipole. The main characteristics of this chamber are its shape (X or Y), its dimensions constrained by the air gap and the dimensions of the dipoles, its aluminium material, which is essential given the activation issues, its vacuum tightness, its mechanical strength and its level of deformation under vacuum, its mass, and its connection interfaces with Con Flate type flanges.

Together, GANIL and STIRWELD are pooling their knowledge to continue to develop new technical solutions that meet all the identified constraints.

Stirweld website: https://stirweld.com/