University Professor Emeritus David Matlock will deliver a plenary lecture on steel this October at Materials Science and Technology 2016, one of the premier annual conferences in materials engineering.
Matlock, a member of the Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department, will present the AIST Adolf Martens Memorial Steel Lecture, titled “Enhancing the Fatigue Performance of Steel: Have We Learned Anything from the Past?”
Matlock notes that fatigue failures in operating equipment continue to occur despite extensive research since the mid-1800s, when multiple railroad axle failures led to catastrophic accidents in Europe and the identification of the most important basic aspects of fatigue.
Studying fatigue remains extremely important, Matlock said, “particularly with the current emphasis on lightweight designs and optimized material usage in many systems” such as transportation. This optimization results in higher operating stresses and fewer safety factors, which increases the potential for fatigue failures.
Matlock will present a history of fatigue testing and failure, review the fundamental basis for fatigue, and discuss opportunities for increasing fatigue performance—and, consequently, the safety—of operating equipment.
The Association for Iron and Steel Technology established the lecture award in 2010 to honor of Adolf Martens, a German metallurgist from the late 19th and early 20th century who was a pioneer in establishing structure-property relationships in steel and one of the first researchers to use optical microscopy to observe that hard steels had different features than soft steels at the microscale.
The lecture award recognizes the achievement of significant, broadly known technical accomplishments that have enabled important advances in processing and product application in the field of ferrous physical metallurgy, and have either provided dramatic contributions to the field or made a lifetime of important contributions to the field.
Matlock, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, holds a BS from the University of Texas at Austin, and MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University. He joined Mines in 1972, and established the Advanced Steel Processing and Products Research Center with fellow University Emeritus Professor George Krauss in 1984. The center has since been recognized as one of the most successful centers of its kind and draws an annual budget of more than $1.5 million, the majority of which comes from industry support.
MS&T16 will be held October 23 to 27 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is the comprehensive forum for materials science and engineering technologies. The conference brings together a broad range of technical sessions and expertise, combining the strengths of six major materials organizations: AIST, the American Ceramic Society, ASM International, Metallurgy and Materials Society of CIM, NACE International, and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.
Contact:
Mark Ramirez, Communications Manager, College of Applied Science & Engineering | 303-384-2622 | ramirez@mines.edu
Deirdre Keating, Communications Manager, College of Engineering & Computational Sciences | 303-384-2358 | dkeating@mines.edu
