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: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @01:29PM
Are you trying to tell me that Ayn Rand was Chinese? Which novel are we in, and how many rape scenes are there?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by FakeBeldin on Sunday August 27 2017, @01:46PM
Where's my space elevator?!?!!one!!?
(Score: 5, Informative) by RamiK on Sunday August 27 2017, @02:38PM
http://www.france-metallurgie.com/introduction-to-metallurgy-of-maraging-steels-us/ [france-metallurgie.com]
I hate using that word, but it really sounds like a breakthrough.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @02:42PM
Right now all we have is a scientific paper and some media attention. When we see some reproducible *independent* lab tests, then it's real.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by epitaxial on Sunday August 27 2017, @03:08PM (2 children)
They figured out how to make the same steel that other countries are using. I've bought enough car parts to know that what China calls steel is whatever scrap they melted down that day.
(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).
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 28 2017, @05:28PM
I've bought enough car parts to know that what China calls steel is whatever scrap they melted down that day.
Actually, it's the exact opposite. All steel production in the US is recycled. We're the ones melting down scrap. China is the only place you can still buy virgin steel.
(Source: worked in the steel industry for 10 years)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @05:01PM (1 child)
Is this beginning of the end?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:35AM
made by communists??? *faints*
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @06:05PM (7 children)
Living on the West Coast I've seen a lot of products from China over the past forty years.
After Nixon went to China and we started trade, over the next ten or twenty years I saw a flood of inferior Chinese steel tools in flea markets.
Then, around the mid-90s, the steel started getting better. At some point it became cost-effective to buy Chinese tools because they were as good as Sears Craftsman tools or other well-known brands, but they were cheaper. Harbor Freight gets a lot of their tools from China - see for yourself.
Recently I took a class in machine shop. One of the other students was a professor who had spent a lot of time in China. He opined that China now had better control of steel than we did and could roll steel panels thinner than we could. He cited vehicle production lines and vehicle weights as evidence.
My sense is that America has been throwing their best and brightest and most creative people under a bus unless they had money to go to college at their own expense, for, what, five or six decades now?
Obviously, China and other countries have treated their intelligentsia as valued resources instead of annoyances that interfered with watching television in the evenings.
I say China deserves its success. They have earned it fair and square.
~ childo
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @06:36PM (3 children)
For a long time now, China has been the #1 problem for industrial espionage. No other country even comes close. China's success is largely stolen.
It would be "fair" to return the favor, but never mind that. The concept of "fair" is kind of silly for international relations and for when the prosperity of your culture is at stake. I can't be too offended at what they did to us. I'd do it to them. This is exactly what we need to do for our country: use every possible method, underhanded or not, to gain economic advantage over China.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Sunday August 27 2017, @10:25PM (1 child)
Espionage, you say? For decades, USA was at the receiving end of the Brain drain - not only "steal secrets" it "stole" whole teams.
Letting aside the morals and ethics, R&D is a race where the contestants need to keep running just to stay in the game.
You slowed down overall and stopped in others, why are you complaining now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday August 27 2017, @10:34PM
What goes around, comes around. Only a matter of time.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:39AM
Pot, kettle, black.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-snowden-germany-idUSBREA0P0DE20140126 [reuters.com]
[blockquote]The U.S. National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage and will grab any intelligence it can get its hands on regardless of its value to national security, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden told a German TV network.
In text released ahead of a lengthy interview to be broadcast on Sunday, ARD TV quoted Snowden saying the NSA does not limit its espionage to issues of national security and he cited German engineering firm, Siemens as one target.
"If there's information at Siemens that's beneficial to U.S. national interests - even if it doesn't have anything to do with national security - then they'll take that information nevertheless," Snowden said, according to ARD, which recorded the interview in Russia where he has claimed asylum. [/blockquote]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Sunday August 27 2017, @11:07PM
The thing is, you can figure out how to go to and pay for college, if you really are part of the best and brightest.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @12:49AM
America has been throwing their best and brightest and most creative people under a bus unless they had money to go to college at their own expense, for, what, five or six decades now?
Ronald Reagan was an FDR Democrat early in his life.
(His dad was a drunk, made worse by The Great Depression, on Republican Herbert Hoover's watch; that family would have starved if not for a New Deal job for that guy.)
Reagan (now a Reactionary Republican) was elected Governor of California in 1966.
He now hated Progressives, especially those folks on college campuses who were protesting e.g. USA Imperialism in Vietnam.
For a century, California residents had been able to go to public colleges sans tuition.
Reagan ended that. [google.com]
.
...and Ronnie was President of The Screen Actors Guild (a union) for a while.
When he got to be US President, he showed the complete contempt he had acquired for Organized Labor.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @03:00PM
This does not help your argument at all. Every tool I've bought at Harbor Freight has broken in the first 3 uses. Every. Single. One. That place is known for selling low price tools that don't last long. If you want a tool to last, you do NOT buy it from Harbor Freight.
(Score: 2) by anotherblackhat on Monday August 28 2017, @12:33AM
While "typical" steel is about 200 MPa, the steel used in cables is much better - around 1 GPa.
2.2 GPa is remarkable for cheaply made steel. If true, it should result in stronger, cheaper, bridges.
But it's hardly "space elevator" strong, or even breakthrough strong.
Some maraging steel is 2.7 GPa, and 2.4 GPa is pretty easy to get a hold of. It's just expensive.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @07:57AM (1 child)
Everyone knows that the Chinese don't ever develop anything original themselves but are very adept at stealing or otherwise appropriating the technology of other nations. So, who did they steal the steel from?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:44AM
They stole it from the exceptional Americans who also invented gunpowder, paper, democracy, Freedom(c) and table tennis.