SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
http://www.hku.hk/press/news_detail_16681.html
A Hong Kong-Beijing-Taiwan mechanical engineering team led by Dr Huang Mingxin from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has recently developed a Super Steel (also called D&P Steel as it adopted a new deformed and partitioned (D&P) strategy) which addressed the strength-ductility trade-off. Its material cost is just one-fifth of that of the steel used in the current aerospace and defence applications. This research breakthrough is recently published in the prestigious academic journal Science.
[...] In addition to the substantial improvement of tensile properties, this breakthrough steel has achieved the unprecedented yield strength of 2.2 GPa and uniform elongation of 16%. Additionally, this breakthrough steel has two advantages:
(1). Low raw-materials cost.
The raw materials cost of the D&P steel is only 20% of the maraging steel used in aerospace and defence applications. The chemical composition of this breakthrough steel belongs to the system of medium manganese (Mn) steel, containing 10% manganese, 0.47% carbon, 2% aluminium, 0.7% vanadium (mass percent), and the balance is iron. No expensive alloying elements have been used exhaustively but just some common alloying compositions that can be widely seen in the commercialized steels. Figure 1[1] compares the raw materials cost between the present D&P steel with other high-strength steels.
(2). Simple industrial processing
The second advantage is that this breakthrough steel can be developed using conventional industrial processing routes, including warm rolling, cold rolling and annealing. This is different from the development of other metallic materials where the fabrication processes involve complex routes and special equipment, which are difficult to scale-up. Therefore, it is expected that the present breakthrough steel has a great potential for industrial mass production.
[1] Figure 1.
High dislocation density–induced large ductility in deformed and partitioned steels (open, DOI: 10.1126/science.aan0177) (DX)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @04:44PM
Probably won't have to wait that long for verification, there are many applications for lower cost high strength steel. If it's real than I join RamiK in calling this a breakthrough (without the usual journalistic inflation). 2.2 GPa is ~320,000 psi which is right in the middle of the available maraging steel properties, including the large elongation before yield (iirc).
30 years ago we used a little bit of maraging steel for a shaft that was constrained to a small diameter and it was really expensive. It was fairly easy to process--machine it when soft, then put in an oven and soak for some hours. Reminded me of precipitation hardening of some aluminum alloys like 6061 (but at higher temp).