There will be a 55 minute presentation followed by 15 minutes of discussion.
Iron and its alloys have been a part of humanity since the Ancient Egyptians first fashioned meteoric iron into precious objects from about 3000BC, and steel and cast iron have gone on to shape our modern world and remain at the core of what we define as a technological society. The story of how these materials altered our world is a lesson in history that is often told, but the science behind these materials is probably less accessible, and the engineering often reduced to what can at times seem a black art. This seminar provides a concise review of the guiding metallurgy behind a range of iron alloys, starting with an appreciation of their properties, origins, and manufacture, but quickly moving on to their microstructures, and crucially how these link to the Fe-C phase diagram and its interpretation. The notion of non-equilibrium microstructures will then be introduced, and how these can be generated through heat-treatment and a basic knowledge of time-temperature transformation (TTT) diagrams. In this way, the black arts of steel and iron will be seen to be firmly rooted in science!
Adam Wojcik is Associate Professor in Materials Science at UCL Mechanical Engineering, London. In addition to his science and engineering background, Adam also has undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in archaeology and classics
