Record Number of Member Companies attend SMSVC Annual Meeting
The Steel Manufacturing Simulation and Visualization Consortium (SMSVC) held its Fall Semi-Annual Meeting at PNW’s CIVS facilities on November 13-14, 2019. More than 65 attendees, including SMSVC members and CIVS staff, joined together over the successful two-day meeting event.
It drew steel manufacturing engineers and materials/utilities and process professionals from across the globe for a review of ongoing student-and-industry collaborative research projects that continue to advance steel industry safety, energy and process efficiency, and product quality.
This year’s annual meeting highlighted growth in industry-academia collaborations and activities, membership, and an emphasis on “Industry 4.0/Digital Transformation.” Four new SMSVC members were introduced to the group; Gerdau, Charter Steel, NLMK Indiana, EVRAZ North America.
The “heart” of the annual meeting, as always, is the SMSVC members’ review of the project technical presentations and refinement of research focus in the respective topic areas. CIVS graduate students delivered presentations on work in areas including the ironmaking blast furnace, steel refining ladle, electric arc furnace, and steel continuous caster, to name a few. Among the presenters were CIVS PhD students Haibo Ma and Yuchao Chen, graduating CIVS Masters’ students Bethany Worl, Joshua Vandenoever, Xipeng Guo, and Matthew Moore, and CIVS Senior Research Engineer Tyamo Okosun.
Following the presentations, the technical committees for each of the SMSVC research areas met in person to discuss project status, provide feedback to students, and propose focus areas for research in 2020. Attendees also experienced the latest in visualization technology and software development firsthand on state-of-the-art virtual reality systems housed in the CIVS visualization laboratory.
Wednesday evening also included a reception and dinner at PNW’s Alumni Hall, with keynote speaker Tom P. Dakich, from Digital Crossroads of America, giving an address regarding the “Benefits and Challenges of Revitalizing an Old Industrial Site into a Modern Data Center.”
