We are committed to innovation in every aspect of our business with our products and solutions. Our R&D investment and team of experts is unrivalled. We drive breakthroughs in materials and data, new business models and efficient new processes that transform what is possible under extreme conditions.
Our mission in Research & Development is to have a best-in-class R&D organization offering customized solutions for our customers with lean processes and retaining technological leadership.
We cooperate closely with public and private research institutions all over the world.
Our multidisciplinary researchers undergo constant training and technical education to maintain the excellence of our team.
The innovation process is customer-focused and structured in a Stage-Gate process: short-term requirements in the customer industries as well as long-term trends among key customers are observed continuously and registered by the marketing departments of the business units. Products, processes and systems are developed on a laboratory and pilot-plant scale, in production trials and subsequently tested to the specifications defined in the project scope.
The centers count on modern equipment, technical expertise and partnership with leading technological partners. Their main objective is to optimize the business, operating in the entire supply chain through the development of several technical studies, supporting Mining, Production, Quality, Sales, Technical Marketing, seeking and maintaining our continuously technological improvement.
We have Technology Centers in:
In addition to material research under consideration of thermal, physical and chemical loads on refractory materials and in addition to research in the field of process technology, the development of new simulation models based on thermodynamics, fluid dynamics and structural mechanics is another significant focus of our research activities.
This technology is used for instance for evaluation of the liquid steel flow behavior during steel production, for the verification and prognosis of temperature and stress distribution in refractory materials and for the optimization of production processes.. The same methods can be applied for optimizations of production efficiency, cost reduction and for increase of safety whereby the necessity of long lasting and expensive field trials at customer industries is minimized.
Studies on water models at room temperature to simulate the flow behavior of liquid steel complete the research activities. Products for continuous casting like submerged entry nozzles, impact pots for the tundish but also slide gate systems are tested and further improved.
Due to extreme conditions and restricted accessibility of many high temperature processes, conducting experiments is hardly possible. Then analyses can often only be done with the aid of simulations. Therefore RHI Magnesita is equipped for modeling and simulation with the latest hard- and software systems and performs validation tests on the developed methods.
The intellectual property rights department is assigned to R&D Europe.
Tasks related to intellectual property rights cover the process from an invention to the patent granted as well as the measures to maintain and defend the rights related to the patent.
At present, we have c.2000 patents.
The Bulletin is a scientific trade journal for refractory innovations, in which our specialists inform you about the latest research and development results. For more information, downloading and subscribing, click here.