Metallurgical Research & Technology 2020 Best Paper Award (June 2021)

In free access!

We are delighted to announce the winner of the Metallurgical Research & Technology 2020 Best Paper Award.

The Metallurgical Research & Technology Best Paper Award honors the author(s) of a paper of exceptional merit dealing with research and/or industrial aspects in metallurgy and bringing an outstanding contribution to the field. All articles published during the current year prior to the award, including Short Communications, Regular articles, Reviews and Topical contributions, can be considered for an award. The editorial committee meets every year, in December, to judge the best papers according to the criteria of originality, innovation, significance to the research community, industrial relevance, technical excellence, impact, and clarity of presentation.

The authors of the awarded articles are offered a book from the EDP Sciences catalogue. In addition, they are given the possibility to publish a press release about their work and/or their laboratory/team. Finally, the selected articles are turned into free access so that all readers can have a chance to read them.

First prize winner

Chengsong Liu and Bryan Webler for their article "Evolution of non-metallic inclusions during heat treatment", published in Metall. Res. Technol. 117, 408 (2020).

Isothermal heat treatment can not only modify steel microstructure, but also non-metallic inclusions. In this work, heat treatment experiments have been carried out at different temperatures in the range of 1373 to 1573 K under an argon atmosphere, and the resulting changes in morphology, composition, size distribution of the inclusions were subsequently analyzed. At relatively higher heat treatment temperatures (1473 and 1573 K), the two main kinds of inclusions initially in the steels, CaS and MgO–Al₂O₃–CaO–CaS, gradually transformed to (Ca, Mn)S and MgO–Al₂O₃–(Ca, Mn)S inclusions, respectively, and some MgO–Al₂O₃–CaO inclusions also transformed to MgO–Al₂O₃–(Ca, Mn)S, while little evidence of transformation was observed at 1373 K. The extent of transformation increased with decreasing inclusion size and higher temperature. This study has fully clarified the transformation mechanism of inclusions in the steels during heat treatment which is essential for subsequent hot rolling process and control of steel product quality.

About the authors

Chengsong Liu was born in 1986 and is an associate professor at the School of Materials and Metallurgy, Wuhan University of Science and Technology (WUST). He received his Bachelor degree, Master degree and Ph.D. Degree from University of Science and Technology (USTB). He worked at China first heavy industries (China) and Carnegie Mellon University (USA). His research interests are mainly clean steel and non-metallic inclusions in steel. He has published more than 40 journal papers and has managed multiple projects from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), The Office of China Postdoctoral Council, Hubei Association for Science & Technology, and so on.

Bryan Webler is an Associate Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University and a faculty member in the Center for Iron and Steelmaking Research (CISR). He received a B.S. in Engineering Physics from the University of Pittsburgh in 2005 and a M.S. (2007) and Ph.D. (2008) in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon. His PhD work was with CISR, studying the copper-induced hot shortness of steel. From 2008 to 2013, he was a Senior Engineer in the Materials Technology Department of the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, studying corrosion resistance and mechanical behavior of stainless steels and nickel-base alloys. Dr. Webler joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 2013. His research interests are in the reactions between metals and their environment, both during processing and in-service. He also teaches classes on phase transformations, computational thermodynamics, and corrosion/oxidation of metals. Dr. Webler serves as Materials Advantage faculty advisor at Carnegie Mellon and is active in the Association for Iron and Steel Technology, serving as the current chair of the Metallurgy – Steelmaking and Casting Committee and teaching the “Making, Shaping, and Treating of Steel: 101” course. He was awarded the Kent D. Peaslee Junior Faculty Award from AIST in 2015 and is currently an AIST Foundation Steel Professor.