OCAS’s facilities include equipment for advanced mechanical, chemical and microstructural characterisation. Our experienced staff helps to select or even develop the best test methodology to speed up your R&D. Test results can be used to compare different materials and optimise geometries. However, test results are also needed to validate numerical models, to predict lifetime of components and structures.

To increase industrial assets reliability, OCAS focuses on non-standard testing and modelling of materials and components to elucidate everything that triggers damage: fatigue, wear, corrosion, hydrogen and combinations of these factors. 

Browse our equipment pages or discover a few highlights of our in-house designed equipment and novel methodologies.

OCAS meets its customers’ needs by developing alloys and coatings, by co-developing steel applications, and by processing and testing metal-based samples. 

Various alloys in different geometries

OCAS has access to an extended range of lab equipment to synthesise customised alloys in small batches. Unique metal alloys can be processed from liquid phase, over rolling down to final heat treatment in one integrated laboratory. 

The first step towards accelerated alloy development, is miniaturisation. This allows both time and resource/raw material savings. OCAS has dedicated equipment for small-scale casting.

Thanks to our unique combination of lab metal processing equipment and advanced characterisation methods, OCAS can offer its metallurgical expertise also during the development of multi-component systems.

Coatings and surface pre-treatment

In many cases, OCAS can bring your innovation in metal surface engineering to successful industrial upscaling thanks to our pilot-scale sample production.

Combining our expertise in the field of surface pre-treatment, coating application technology and advanced coating characterisation, the OCAS surface engineering team can offer an interesting range of services on plating. Our team strives to optimise both process characteristics as well as product performance.

OCAS’ skilled staff and state-of-the-art equipment not only provide technical support to production lines and their customers, but also boost the development of future enamelled products.

Through their scientific community, OCAS’s experts are in contact with more than 180 universities and institutes, worldwide.

OCAS is therefore often chosen as preferred partner in private consortia as well as in funded collaboration projects such as RFCS, Horizon2020, Interreg, Belgian Energy Transition Fund, etc. Research data are highly valuable and used to compare materials, assemblies or to optimise designs. These co-operations often result in joint scientific publications. 

At OCAS, we strive to bring tailored solutions to our customers. We closely collaborate with customers to solve their design and engineering challenges. Our co-engineering projects cover a wide variety of market segments, including transportation, agricultural machinery, household appliances and heating ventilation and air conditioning.  The key drivers are most often cost and weight reduction, energy savings, and improved performance. In the first stage, the team works to identify the customer’s needs. Technical specifications are discussed, along with requirements and constraints of the application. Using this input, a first analysis is made with some suggestions for improvement, which can include a switch to other steel grades or design changes. At this stage, finite element analysis is very often used to study the behaviour of the applications. The customer considers the recommendations and their cost impact.  Then, the team supports the customer with experimental testing, as required. In a final stage, the team can assist in prototyping and, ultimately, in testing the final design. 

To help grow budding contacts and relationships with customers, OCAS has put considerable effort into illustrating the benefits that can be attained. OCAS therefore, developed several example cases in a range of markets with the explicit goal of opening up new vistas for our customers and sparking collaboration. Each of these examples is based on a generic, relevant and representative design.

Technical support can be provided on various topics covering metallurgical, surface or application related expertise, in fields including forming, welding, durability: fatigue, wear, corrosion. Furthermore, OCAS has a dedicated team that handles assignments for which we already have the equipment and the expertise. This approach ensures efficiency and short response times, which are highly appreciated when providing technical support to production plants as well as other customers. 

Joint Industry Projects

As some programmes are usually too large for one operator only, it is crucial te be able to collaborate through a central platform.

One example is the Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) initiative in the UK. OWA initiated a project towards recuding the cost of new jacket structures for offshore wind foundations. In this framework, OCAS proposed a programme to push the limits of offshore design codes to upgrade the fatigue performance of welded jacket nodes. The objective is to reduce the thickness of critical joint so that they need less welding and are lighter and cheaper. Through its patented resonant bending methodology, OCAS has made it possible to reduce testing time, thus collecting enough fatigue data in a reasonable project time. 

Today, the  Joint Industry Project JaCo “Jacket Connections for offshore windmill infrastructure“, consits of 8 top-noth offshore wind developers, 3 major certification bodies and various important actors in the offshore wind supply chain are also involved. The consortium of participating partners to this flagship project decided to include a comparison between 6 specimens tested at OCAS using our home-engineered CRONOS set-up allowing much faster testing, with 6 other specimens testing in another lab using the comventional method. Althoug the results are still confidential, we can report that they are extremely similar. 

Another example in which OCAS played a major role are two Joint Innovation Projects seeking to establish guidelines for the production and qualification of additive manufactured parts for the oil and gas and maritime industries. The JIPs, organized by DNV GL, an international accredited registrar and classification society, and comprised of 20 different partners, involved 2 years of intensive work and discussion. Their goal was to develop guidelines to help qualify parts produced by Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) and Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) processes.

Joint Ventures

OCAS assists the investment company Finindus by technology scouting, in order to support the setting up of external ventures. 

In 2008, OCAS was strongly involved in the preparation of the external investment file of PowerCell, a manufacturer of fuel cells, reformers and auxiliary power units. The fuel cells are powered by hydrogen, pure or reformed, and produce electricity and heat with no emissions other than water. The share (PCELL) is since 2014 subject to trade at Nasdaq First North Stockholm with G&W Fondkommission as Certified Adviser.

In 2010, OCAS set up a joint venture with borit. Meanwhile, borit has become a world-class manufacturer of high precision sheet metal hydroformed components and assemblies in Geel (Belgium). Borit was awarded “Factory of the future” in 2018 and in 2024.

In 2019, OCAS further expanded its expertise by joining forces with Endures, and thus to further deepen their offshore and maritime activities in an integrated approach. 

Also in 2019, the spin-off company, Guaranteed, was created by OCAS, Finindus and ArcelorMittal Belgium to add value for its customers by repairing, refurbishing and producing large metal parts using Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM). Using state-of-the-art advanced simulation tools to guarantee ‘right first time’ production, Guaranteed works to reduce downtime and lengthen the lifetime of industrial equipment.