Luis Peiró, a mining engineer with a master’s degree in metallurgy and materials from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, has spent his entire professional life in the metallurgical sector. He started working at Alcoa and then moved to the Acerinox group, where he spent 7 years working in production at the Ponferrada factory. In 2014, he was appointed Sales Director of long steel products at the Madrid headquarters. Since then he has also been Technical Director of the Spanish Stainless Steel Investigation and Research Association (Cedinox), promoting the dissemination of stainless steel in universities and different international fairs and forums. Among his many functions is that of coordinating any possible R&D projects that may arise with the technical departments of the manufacturers. He belongs to different committees of the ISSF (International Stainless Steel Forum), he is a member of the CTN 36 standardisation technical committee and advisor to the Marketing team of the Acerinox group.

Stainless steel is an extraordinary material, and its excellent properties make it required and widely used in most sectors. In spite of this, it remains a complete unknown for many professionals or, what is worse, knowledge is limited the superficial idea that it is a more expensive material than other options.

In order to tackle this problem, the Spanish Stainless Steel Investigation and Research Association, Cedinox, took the decision to offer free training in the form of seminars in national schools of architecture and engineering. With a presence in more than 20 universities and some 1000 students per year, the purpose of the seminars is to make the properties of this excellent material better known to future professionals, with practical cases and case-studies that will enrich the knowledge acquired.

Stainless steel often has a higher initial cost than other options, there is no doubt about that. Nevertheless, it offers large and diverse savings in the medium and long term that are often not taken into account, and when they are, this “initially more expensive” option, ends up contributing notable savings to the project. The costs associated with maintenance, durability, corrosion or failure in service, to name but a few, represent significant economic outlays that must be taken into account when selecting a material.

Knowing what type of stainless steel to use in each case and the reasons that justify this decision, is vital information for new professionals. These stainless steel seminars would not be completely productive if they did not have the involvement of the universities themselves, and with this idea in mind, we are working on the signing of collaboration agreements and identifying different synergies in research and knowledge management.

“At Cedinox we aim to continue collaborating with companies like Titania, adding value to the knowledge of this material”

Manuel Vázquez, student of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cadiz, received the 3rd Acerinox Prize for his work “Simulation of duplex steel rolling process using the finite elements method”, developed in Titania.

This Association-University collaboration would not be complete without the involvement of the Company. In this sense, Acerinox offers an annual prize in which all final degree or master’s projects dealing with stainless steels can participate, providing an additional incentive for students to discover its properties by working with this material.

This type of initiative promotes the development of projects in stainless steel by those students who do internships in companies, using the concepts acquired and the resources that these companies put at their disposal to prepare projects as interesting as that of the “Simulation of duplex steel rolling process using the finite element method”, carried out by Manuel Vázquez Morales in Titania’s facilities and which was the winner in the 3rd Edition of the Acerinox Award.

At Cedinox we aim to continue collaborating with companies like Titania, adding value to the knowledge of this material.