University of Oulu and SSAB lead EUR 23 million project to develop ultra-high-strength steels and factory simulations
The RIS4E project (Revolutionary and Intelligent Steel Solutions for Sustainable Environment) was selected on 13 May 2026 as part of a Business Finland-funded Veturi initiative programme led by SSAB. The programme will significantly increase research and development activities in Finland, with SSAB’s locomotive project having an estimated cost of EUR 50 million.
The three-year RIS4E project, now getting under way, has a budget of 23 million euros. The industrial partners are SSAB, Indalgo, John Deere Forestry, Konecranes, Nome and Rauma Marine Construction. The research partners are the University of Oulu, LUT University and Tampere University.
Ship hull structures, harbour cranes and forestry machines are examples of equipment in which ultra-high-strength steels play a central role. These structures must withstand heavy loads and demanding conditions. In forestry machines, for example, the boom that reaches and saws trees must be long and strong, while the machine itself needs to be light and agile in difficult terrain. When structures are made from stronger steel, less material is needed, the equipment becomes lighter and energy consumption decreases.
The steel industry is undergoing a transformation as coal-burning blast furnaces are replaced by electric arc furnaces powered by electricity. The change is not limited to the energy source; it also reshapes the entire steelmaking process. The RIS4E project supports this transformation by developing factory and manufacturing simulations, as well as reverse engineering, in which the production chain for special steels is modelled backwards from the end product to the steel mill. The different stages of the production chain are modelled and simulated to make product development faster and more precise.
Advanced mathematical solutions and process simulations underpin the development work. “The use of simulations has been successfully expanded, and digital twins — highly accurate virtual copies — have been created for the different stages of the steel production process,” says Professor Jukka Kömi from the University of Oulu, who leads the RIS4E project.
The project’s design logic differs from the traditional approach by working backwards from the end to the beginning. The starting point is the requirements of the final product, such as the steel’s strength, toughness, weldability and surface quality. Based on these requirements, the project models the type of factory production chain needed to achieve the desired result. “We take information from the end use, and even from post-use recycling, back into the stages of steel production,” Kömi explains.
“The RIS4E project is an essential part of SSAB’s Sustainable World Through Steels mission and Veturi initiative project. In the future, operations will be transformed both by the introduction of new processes and by changes in the raw material base for steel. The aim is to use increasing amounts of recycled steel instead of iron ore. In the project, we model changing factory processes based on electric arc furnace steelmaking and combine them with the quality requirements of special steels,” says Pasi Suikkanen, Professor of Practice at the University of Oulu, who also works as Head of Product Development at SSAB Europe and was one of the planners of the RIS4E project.
The project’s solutions are also needed in the welding workshop industry. The weldability of ultra-high-strength steels is a significant challenge, as heating can alter the steel’s microstructure and properties. To address this, the project will build a virtual workshop in which welding can be optimised. “Accurate simulations make it possible to test alternatives without slow trial-and-error process experiments,” Kömi says. The aim is to make the production of strong and lightweight steel structures more efficient and to develop production automation.