R&D-activities of voestalpine Austria Draht are mainly based on market- and customer- needs. We lay special emphasis on the development of new steel concepts and advanced processes in order to obtain special microstructures with optimized forming behaviour (e.g. thermo-mechanical rolling).

The R&D work is aiming at the demands of our customers, and mainly focusing on the products wire rod and drawn wire.


R&D-topics:

- surface conditioning
- heat treatment, phase transformation and microstructure inspection
- coatings, galvanizing, lubricants
- surface cleaning, descaling, pickling,
- straightening, residual stresses
- optimization of chemical composition and integrated production processes in order to achieve enhanced final properties of our products
- development of new inline surface inspection technologies



R&D-partners:

- customers
- suppliers
- University of Leoben
- Graz University of Technology
- CDL Christian Doppler Research Association
- MCL Material Center Leoben
- European co-operation projects
- Brite Euram
- RFCS (former EGKS)


Special attention has been paying on the automotive supplying industry. About 50 % of our wire products will be found in various automotive applications.