Category: Metals and Alloys

One Minute Mentor: Metallurgy of Ferritic Stainless Steels

Chromium stabilizes the ferritic structure at high temperatures, but some austenite can form at high temperature in steels with 12% chromium and a low or medium percentage of carbon, as shown in the graph.

Space telescope boasts a dozen flight mirrors

One dozen flight mirrors are now installed on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, out of the eighteen mirror segments that make up the primary mirror.

Rick Sisson Wins Trustees Research & Creative Scholarship Award

ASM Fellow Richard D. Sisson has received Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s 2016 Board of Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Scholarship.

Heat-treated powder metallurgy titanium alloy has higher strength, lower cost

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash., announces that its research team has improved the strength of a titanium alloy by producing it via powder metallurgy and heat treating it at different temperatures, then quenching in cold water.

3D-printed metal aircraft parts

Alcoa, Pittsburgh, entered into an agreement with Airbus, France, to supply 3D-printed metal parts for commercial aircraft.

Tribogenics XRF analyzer is based on a cartridge system instead of glass X-ray tube

Tribogenics, Los Angeles, Calif., introduces the Watson XRF analyzer, in which the company says conventional glass X-ray tubes are replaced with an X-Change cartridge system that makes changing cartridges “as easy as changing the ink in an inkjet printer.”

One Minute Mentor: Secondary Hardening in Tool Steels

As shown schematically in the graph, high-temperature hardness is made possible only by a very important straightening mechanism: secondary hardening, promoted by the precipitation of fine alloy carbides.

Tresa Pollock named Principal Editor for Metallurgical and Materials Transactions

ASM International, Materials Park, Ohio, announces that the new principal editor of the Metallurgical and Materials Transactions (Met Trans) family of journals will be Dr. Tresa M. Pollock, an internationally recognized leader in the science and technology of advanced structural alloys.

Metal powders are potential replacement for fossil fuels

Can you imagine a future where your car is fueled by iron powder instead of gasoline?

WPI team studies how cracks form in aircraft wings and fuselages

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Mass., announces that a research team will conduct comprehensive testing and characterization studies to understand and monitor how stress and fatigue cause microscopic damage in metal components.