Archive for the ‘Metallurgy’ Category
View crystal structures
June 23rd, 2008
There is a very nice java package which lets you view crystal structures on any computer platform that supports java (Linux, Mac, etc).
can be downloaded from sourceforge . Download the latest binary or full package, unpack it and you are good to go.
Either cd into the directory and run ./jmol or add the directory to your $PATH environment and run jmol.
I have a feeling I have referred to Jmol in a but I think I'd only used it as an applet then.
The full version alloys export of the images to graphics formats, as well as lots of options that I don't understand. You can view molecules in 3D if you have the proper pair of glasses, and you can load crystal structures in the xyz format from sites such as Crystal Lattice*Structures at the U.S. naval research laboratory (note this is very different to navel research). I'm particularly impressed by the ability to change the background colour to white, which is particularly useful if you ever want to print something.
Tin Pest Observation
June 21st, 2008
The transformation of tin from it's metallic state into a powdered state is increasing important due to the use of lead-free solders, which are almost pure tin.
The transformation involves two naturally occurring forms (allotropes) of tin, the semi-conducting powder form is labeled the alpha-tin and the metallic form is a beta-tin. The transformation usually occurs at low temperatures, it's auto-catalytic, and has been observed in church organs in cold northern European countries and the buttons of Napoleon's army when invading Russia. The auto-catalytic nature of the transformation lead to the name 'tin pest' because the reaction looks to eat into the metal.
The reaction can usually take several months but Davide Di Maio and Chris Hunt at the National Physics Laboratory, accelerated the transformation by seeding the tin with a cadmium-telluride powder. Cadmium-telluride has the same (diamond cubic) crystal structure as the powdered form and can therefore act to nucleate alpha-tin from the (tetragonal structured) metal.
The results of the acceleration were captured using time lapse photography in a microscope.
There results are published in the Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics, doi: . Seems to currently be published 'online first'.
Manually created links...
Metallurgy and Materials Science Album
June 19th, 2008
Here are a few ideas I had for the contents of "The Best Metallurgy and Materials Science Album in the World... EVER".
What a Feeling - Irene Cara - from the Movie FlashDance "A world of STEEL and stone"
Material Girl - Madonna - "I am living in a materials world and I am a materials scientist?"
Race for the prize - Flaming lips - "Two scientists were racing For the good of all mankind ... "
???? - We are scientists
Galvanise - Chemical Brothers
????? - Iron Maiden
Iron Man - Ozzie Osbourne
Temper Temper - Goldie
Atomic - Blondie
Fistful Of Steel - Rage Against The Machine
??? - Led Zepplin
Creep - Radiohead
My Iron Lung lyrics - Radiohead
Polyethylene - Radiohead
Life in A Glass House - Radiohead
Chemical World - Blur
Metal Mickey - Suede
Beam - Freddie Mercury
Carbon Monoxide -- Mercury Rev
Polythene Pam - The Beatles
Maxwells Silver Hammer - The Beatles
Fools Gold - The Stone Roses
Going for Gold - Shed Seven
Goldfinger - Ash
Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) - Neil Young (Weld Album)
Lithium - Nirvana
Steeler - Judas Priest - British Steel Album
??? - Pantera - any track from the album 'Reinventing the Steel'.
Ion Lion Zion - Bob Marley
Aluminum - Jack White
Aluminum - Bare Naked Ladies
Uranium - Kraftwerk
Metal on Metal - Kraftwerk (also from Minium-Maximum live album)
Titanium - Kraftwerk
Any more suggestions will be gratefully appreciated.
Information Tormentology
June 18th, 2008
I ringed my uncle who is working with a reputed IT company. Like all other creatures in his company (all benchworkers), my uncle also considers himself very cultured, sophisticated, urbane, civilized …and what not .and show other people how illiterate, uneducated, untaught, uncivilized they are .His idea of good time is to flaunt his knowledge to everyone who he thinks they never been in school. As soon I called him, he got opportunity to sharpen his flaunting skills and a long tête-à-tête followed.
Me: Hello uncle! How are you?
Uncle : very well. What are you doing these days? (arrongantly)
Me: Engineering!
Uncle: When you say engineering you should specify your branch too.
Me: metallurgy
Uncle : what? Met .. mete … ,metero… .,
Me: metallurgy.
Uncle: Oh Meteorology; Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting. (Chattering everything, he knows about the subject in less than 10 seconds) It is very stupid subject There is nothing to learn in it .You have wasted your four years. It doesn’t have any scope in future. I m sorry but I can foresee your miserable life ahead.
Me: No uncle, I said metallurgy.
Uncle: Oh metrology. When you are an engineer, you should be clear when you say something. Understood!
So metrology, I know It is the science of measurement, embracing both experimental and theoretical determinations at any level of uncertainty in any field of science and technology. Why din’t you take computer science or mechanical? Metrology, shaaa! You should have come to me before taking admission.
Me: No Uncle( very politely). It is metallurgy. M E T T…..so on( pronouncing every letter) . It deals with study of extraction of metals.
Uncle : There is no subject in this world what you call metallor, meterlogy …..
Even a word like this does not exist in dictionary. I have been working ( sitting on bench) here in this company, earning handsome salary;1200000 p.a.(there was no need to tell this) ,coming across loads of engineers but I never found anyone from your branch.
Me: Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metals their compounds, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use.
It is there in some good colleges of India (so no question of your college) and steel companies recruit students there. For your information, steel is the product, you might be hearing this word first time, is used in , utensils, car parts, buildings, rockets, satellites ,even computers etc etc.And surprisingly benches are made up of steels. Isn’t it valuable thing?
There was long pause,and then tu tu tu sound. Phone was abruptly cut.
Weird? Me?
June 16th, 2008
Jenny, who writes an hilarious blog over at tagged me a while ago to tell you 5 weird things about me. I have already done this meme a couple of times now (you can check out the two previous occasions and ) so I hesitated to burden you with even more of my oddities. However, on reflection I came up with yet another five quite easily so here they are:
1 I am a bit of a pedant about grammar and spelling. I realise of course, that I am now laying myself open to being corrected every time I write my blog but so be it....
2 My 25th wedding anniversary was on September 11th 2001. A very bad day to be celebrating anything. My (ex) husband had bought me a ring to celebrate the occasion. It was two long thin baguette diamonds - which looked too much like the fateful twin towers for comfort. I have hardly ever worn it.
3 My first pregnancy lasted 11 months. I was originally told my son was going to be born on 25th January but when I had a scan at the beginning of December, they said he was too small and my pregnancy wasn't as advanced as they had originally thought. They then said he was due on March 9th. He was actually born on March 19th. He still finds it very hard to get out of bed.... :-)
4 I was once on the television local news. I had been shopping in Waitrose and as I steered my wobbly trolley around a corner I was confronted by a cameraman and a woman holding a bowl of muesli. Apparently (delicious-highly recommended) is selling like mad out in the Caribbean because they consider it to be an aphrodisiac. She wanted me to try a spoonful and comment. I appeared on the local news looking particularly startled and gormless, mumbling through a mouthful of muesli. Marvellous.
5 When I did my degree, I was the only girl in the class of 20 boys. At the time, Metallurgy was not a subject that appealed to girls. I only chose it because I did Maths, Physics and Chemistry 'A' levels and as I was spectacularly indecisive, I decided to study Metallurgy as I had been told it used all three subjects and I didn't have to make a decision. Bad idea. And as I was spectacularly shy too, I barely spoke to anyone for most of the time I was there. What a waste!
(This image is of Metal Corrosion and was taken with the PAXcam digital microscope camera on an Olympus metallograph at Battelle Advanced Materials. So there.)
I'm not tagging anyone in particular but I would like lots of you to have a go at this (if only to let me know I'm not as weird as all that!) Just leave a link in the comments so I can see how weird you are what you have to say.
I am very thrilled that Number 2 so has just arrived home from university after completing his final year. (Where did that time go? It doesn't seem like 5 minutes since I was dropping him off on his first day - three years ago!) He gets his results on Thursday so we are on tenterhooks until then.... It seems so odd to think that soon he will be off in the big wide world. I could get all wistful about how time flies and start reminiscing about when they were both babies but thereby lies depression and gloom, so I am just going to show what HE was like as a nipper and move swiftly on....
You may have noticed that I have gone quiet on the bookbinding front.... The large album had a major disaster a few days ago. I was sticking the cover paper onto the board cover and thought I was being very clever. (Ha! I should have known better!) Instead of putting the glue onto the paper and having to manhandle a large gluey piece of paper, I thought, 'I know, I will put the glue on the board and then I can manhandle a DRY piece of paper into place'. Genius. Except that the paper wrinkled terribly when it came into contact with the gluey board (I'm thinking that maybe this was because the act of spreading the glue onto the paper, stretches the paper first but doing it this way, the paper stretches after it is on the board and so, wrinkles up).
I tried to smooth out the paper but I managed to tear it and as I didn't have any more of this particular paper, it was a disaster of epic proportions! And it was a Brazilian marbled paper I ordered from in the US. However, I have to say, Shelly at Paper Mojo was a star and has Fedexed me a couple of sheets which have just arrived. (I ordered a spare sheet too!) Luckily, as Number 2 son is now at home, I have the extra pair of hands I needed to finish covering the book, so hopefully, the next stage will go a bit more smoothly.... fingers crossed.
I am listening to Coldplay's new album Viva La Vida and I like it very much. Have I ever mentioned what a HUGE Coldplay fan I am? I have seen them twice in concert in London and then I saw them at Glastonbury three years ago. They are fantastic live. This is the new Apple iTunes ad featuring them singing the title track from the album. I suppose it is just a coincidence that Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow called their first baby Apple?
The only other thing I need to rave about is the match I watched yesterday between Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the final of the Stella Artois Championships at Queen's Club in London. Sublime tennis - so exciting and as close a match as you could imagine. Nadal won eventually but Djokovic played wonderfully and it was a very close run thing.
What a shame my knee is still tweaking and I can't play tennis otherwise I would have played like a demon today after watching such an inspirational match.
Yeah, right.....
FFT for micrographs
June 16th, 2008
After my supervisor jokingly meantioned that I could clean up some micrographs using fourier transform, I thought I might give it a quick go, knowing that this was possible using gimp plugins, and after having some past experience in installing other plugins for the gimp. This is something that is made easier after the stable release of debian now includes gimp 2 rather than gimp 1.3.
A search for 'gimp plugin fft debian' lead me to a useful blog post. Following kstars advice I downloaded from , i'm not sure I successfully compiled the binaries in the source package, however it seems to already include the necessary binaries.
There is also detailed description of how to remove coherent noise using GIMP in the .
The image before processing.
The fourier transform of the image, after manual blurring, position indicated by arrows.
The image after processing, periodic lines removed, cracking is more clearly shown.
Larger versions of the images can be seen at the following. So as we can see, a Professor knows that is it OK if he leaves periodic scratches after polishing, because his students can remove them by image processing.
Landschaftspark - Duisburg Germany
June 16th, 2008
As taken from : http://buildllc.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/landschaftpark-duisburg-germany/
The former Thyssen Meiderich iron and steel plant was abandoned in 1985 and was redesigned in 1991 by . The new complex now includes walkways to tour the plant, waterways, gardens, pools for scuba diving, rock climbing walls and a main piazza for performances and gatherings. “The site was designed with the idea that a grandfather, who might have worked at the plant, could walk with his grandchildren, explaining what he used to do and what the machinery had been used for.” Lighting design by Jonathan Park illuminates portions of the machinery at night. The original plant is fascinating and the transformation maintains an authenticity of its original nature while allowing useful and inspiring programs to inhabit the complex. More information can be found on the .
The nearby plant in Essen faced the same abandonment and has since added an ice skating rink and swimming pool to the complex as part of the re-use program.
The nearby Gasometer in Oberhausen is illuminated and used for theatrical performances.
So how many of you Metallurgy and Materials Engineers now want to work for Software Companies?
UPSC Invites Applications in various posts in various Government of India Ministries and Departments
June 14th, 2008
Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)
UPSC invites application on prescribed forms by 03/07/2008 (10th July, 2008 for the candidates from far flung areas) for various posts in various Government of India Ministries and Departments in the prescribed format. The post are :
Assistant Director (Chemistry) : 01 post in Agriculture Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 8000-13500/-, Age : 35 years, Qualification : M.Sc. Organic Chemistry or Analytical Chemistry or Agricultural Chemistry. 3 years experience.
Reader (Russian Language) : 01 post in Defence Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 12000-18300/- + Spl. pay of Rs.150/- pm, Age : 45 years, Qualification : Good academic record with a Doctoral degree or equivalent published work. 5 years experience of teaching/ research.
Senior Scientific Officers Gr.II (Metallurgy) : 02 posts in Defence Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 8000-13500/-, Age : 35 years, Qualification: Degree in Metallurgical Engineering. 2 years experience.
Senior Scientific Officers Gr.II (Aeronautics) : 01 post in Defence Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 8000-13500/-, Age : 35 years, Qualification: Degree in Aeronautical Engineering. 2 years experience
Senior Scientific Officers Gr.II (Mechanical) : 03 posts in Defence Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 8000-13500/-, Age : 35 years, Qualification: Degree in Mechanical Engineering. 2 years experience
Senior Scientific Officers Gr.II (Electrical) : 02 posts in Defence Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 8000-13500/-, Age : 35 years, Qualification: Degree in Electrical Engineering. 2 years experience
Senior Scientific Officers Gr.II (Electronics) : 03 posts in Defence Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 8000-13500/-, Age : 35 years, Qualification: Master Degree in Electronics or in Physics with Electronics as a special subject or Degree in Electronics/Communication Engineering. 2 years experience
Legal Officer (Gr.II) : 01 post in External Affairs Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 10000-15200/-, Age : 43 years, Qualification : Master's Degree in Law with specialisation in the field of International Law and/or International Relations or International Organisations. 5 years experience.
Junior Analyst : 01 post in Central Food Laboratory, Kolkata in Health & F.W. Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 6500-10500/-, Age : 35 years, Qualification : M.Sc. Degree in Chemistry/ Biotechnology/ Chemistry of Foods and Drugs and Water OR Degree in Foods technology/Technical chemistry. 2 years experience.
Senior Grade of Indian Information Service : 18 posts (SC-2, ST-1,OBC-5, UR-10, PH-1) in Information and Broadcasting Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 6500-10500/-, Age : 30 years, Qualification : Degree from a recognised university (ii) Diploma in Journalism. 3 years experience.
Director (Ore Dressing) : 01 post in Mines Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 18400-22400/_, Age : 50 years, Qualification : Degree in Mining or Chemical or Chemical Technology or Metallurgical Engineering OR Master’s Degree in Geology/ Applied Geology or Ore Dressing or Chemistry or Physics. 15 years experience. from.
Assistant Director Gr.II (Metallurgy) : 01 post in Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organisation Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 6500-10500/-, Age : 30 years, Qualification : Degree in Metallurgy Engineering. 2 years experience.
Medical Officer Gr.II : 25 posts (SC-3, ST-1, OBC-6) in General Reserve Engineer Force of Border Road Organisation, Shipping, Road and Transport and Highways Ministry, Pay Scale : Rs. 8000-13500/-, Age : 35 years, Qualification : A Recognised Medical Degree (ii) Completion of compulsory internship.
Last date is: 03/07/2008
Fee payable is Rs.50/- in the shape of Central Recruitment Fee Stamp only.
For Details of posts, qualification, instructions and application format relating to Advt. No. 11/2008, please visit UPSC web site at http://upsc.gov.in. Completed applications with enclosures should be sent to the Secretary, Union Public Service Commission, Dholpur House, Shahjahan Road, New Delhi - 110069, so as to reach on or before prescribed closing date i.e. 03/07/2008.
GFD’s - When are dislocations necessary?
June 13th, 2008
Geometrically necessary dislocations are a concept used to explain the difference of behaviour to materials seen when testing small volumes by indentation. Especially the higher hardness values found when testing materials by nano-indention.
I'm not sure that dislocations can ever be necessary - just sometimes their existence becomes very likely - surely geometrically favoured dislocation (GFD) would be a better name than geometrically necessary dislocation (GND). Maybe that is too philosophical but I already saw reference to geometically necessary twinning (GNT) and am preparing myself for geometically necessary grains boundaries (GNGB), grains (GNG), phase transformations (GNPT).
A few things annoy be about the name, firstly I don't like acronyms, secondly these dislocations aren't necessary - their existence would only be favourable not necessary, thirdly they aren't favoured by the geometry, the same geometry could be achieved with a different arrangement of atoms. If the material was subsequently annealed and the surface was constrained the dislocation density would be able to decrease.
Huajian Gao and Yonggang Huang discussed GND in the context of size-dependent plasticity in Scripta materailia, 48 (2003) 113-118 and you can find more useful references from their article no doubt.
A periodic array of dislocations is 'necessary' to generate a lattice curvature (a) and (b), H. Gao and Y. Huang 2003.
Geometrically necessary dislocations under an indenter. H. Gao and Y. Huang 2003
Iron Man Movie Review
June 4th, 2008
This is an action packed movie from start to finish. From the opening scene we are gripped and taken thought a non-stop thrill packed journey. The acting is convincing enough and the characters don't need to be since it's understood it's based on a comic book.
There are 4 armour suits in the movie. The first is hand made by Robert Downy Jr/Tony Stark and another engineer supplied by his captors, allowing him to escape and return to America. When he returns Stark shuts down his arms manufacturing since he realises his weapons are used also by the 'bad guys', not just by his country men. He starts to make a new suite which would enable him to fly, it wasn't originally meant to be a weapon, it just turned out to work well as one. During developing the suit he finds that his weapons are still being used by the 'bad guys' so he decides to take matters into directly into his own hands. Finally there is a show down were he fights a bad guy in a supped up version of his own suit.
The first suit is made by hand from steel, and kitted out will a Gatling gun and missiles to enable escape from warlords.
The third suit is produced after the first test flight of the development suit, which is made with a fully automated CAD/CAM system available in Tony Stark's mansion.
Iron Man's suit it powered by the 'Arc reactor' which appears similar in design to a fusion reactor. The first miniature version which he builds is capable of generating 3 GW of power (3 gigajoules per second).
My only complaint is that it's claimed that Iron Man's final suit is meant to be made from gold-aluminium alloy. Tony Stark does still prefer the name 'Iron Man', after first hearing the name he says it's `catchy', probably he would be embarrassed to be referred to as gold--aluminium alloy man. In the movie it is shown that suit can withstand many rounds of ammunition, which would be much more consistent with the suit being made from a which has recently been shown to be superior to other armour. The switch to gold--aluminium alloy was to solve a problem of icing at high altitude, were ice would form on the suit and power would be lost. Unlike an aeroplane the icing should not effect the power production of the suit, since it doesn't rely on a turbine, but a portable reactor. Also the suit doesn't have any aerodynamic control, like wing flaps, to be affected by icing, instead relying on thrust control, so the problem could better be solved just by making sure that the joints remain ice free by heating them.
O.K. there are only 2 problems with this movie, the other being the conspicuous product ... which would have been more believable if he had eaten a whopper rather than a cheeseburger.