Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 30, 1980, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free 1980 if metallurgists hit Back at tb6 eco Zhitni the text Motoy of materials has Asvitt to a Yeats of patient feet Fec have Simoti excess tests out of we More common engineering ceramics and it id the Labott Stirm squeezing stt6 joining then in tit useful shape fat Cost the dig Money these so what is the Way ahead technological mail probably already has Alt the Basic materials he needs Fot the foreseeable what he cafe do is to write recipes for fancy new confections to be made from these offt Heshel recipes that exploit the pending knowledge of what makes materials behave the Way they do in order to give them improved me can also learn to use materials especially in order to save these Are the strategic at a tactical the Battle of the Day is Between metals and the big guns Are still ranged on the Side of that ubiquitous structural mild is so Good at its it has made engineers Bridges and skyscrapers Are a credit not to their but to the in ther stress makes steel creep when unexpectedly High loads Are encountered which happens More often than generally a steel Structure does not break but merely redistributing its overload around adjacent bits of the when steel creeps stretches slightly Over a period of plastics sometimes break when they so plastic structures have to be designed far More techno logical Man is not very Good at doing but he will have to learn As plastics become More widely especially in areas where steel now forgives an engineers the older bulk plastics Industry is approaching the same sort of maturity that steel reached at the beginning of the Industrial countries generally produce about tonnes of steel per head a year Japan produces twice As output of plastics and polymers is approaching tonnes per the growth in plastic production per head is still rising but it is Likely to Peak in the developed world at the end of the Britain chief scientist for Duncan draws interesting parallels Between the growth of steel since 1860 and plastics since both u initially were military materials made expensively in Small d came into use As a result of process rather than product with it was the Siemens open Hearth Furnace and the Bessemer converter that enabled the Metal to take Over from ushering in the new age of precision with it was the invention of the ethylene d rapidly penetrated their respective growing at a 13 annual this slackened to around 9 once output in the leading country Britain for West Germany for plastics and polymers reached around tonnes per head see d created product development special new poly mers in spurred further demand changed materially As the steel Industry it also changed its with the decline of shipbuilding and armaments came profitable uses for steel in motor tin building reinforcements and electrical steel users like the motor Industry add 1020 times the value of the steel strip that leaves the rolling manufacturers who use plastics often add Only two to five times tie initial value of the material they but they Are learning to use their plastics More that Means lighter plastic More weigh saving components for fuel conscious industries like above the catchphrase will be More from less stiffening the material in just those places needed for carrying loads foaming it with air for added stiffness and and reinforcing it with fibres for extra precise design of this sort should make a tonne of plastic go four times the betting is where they plastic will go on winning against in the longer both May lose ground to new materials especially the composites ultimately newfangled biological on one thing plastics men All agree no new wonder polymer is going to take the world by storm for several the world is therefore stuck with the present big five thermoplastic the Low and High density polystyrene and the copolymers and poly Vinyl Between they account for 95 of the wolds present 47m tonnes of plastic a year their average Price was around a that was before feedstock prices went through the during the Price of the most important Rose 70 in Western Europe and 35 in cheap Energy research chemists have found better things to do in their laboratories than Bash their Heads against thermoplastic Brick specially plastics Are pricier and More profit one of the latest crazes in the Alchemy of specially plastics is trying to Alloy plastics alloys Are not to be confused with the simply copolymers those with molecules made up of two or More monomers that have been around for polymer chemists Are endeavouring to do what metallurgists did a Century ago when engineers started demanding metals that were lighter or More in Par they want to blend some of their rare polymers which have special properties but prohibitive prices or far too High moulding temperatures with cheaper and More Fordable the going has been alloying metals is a Pushover by Price is too the classic polymer Alloy is patented 20 years ago by the american firm general it is a useful engineering of a polymer called pro Short for Methyl Henrylene oxide with the competitive Price of on its pro is a Superb engineering but it has to be heated to before becoming soft enough to be injected into a that makes fabrications difficult and by can be worked at around but it is too Brittle for anything other than plastic Coffee cups and the in combining the two orly gives Good Impact resistance and can be moulded at around 140 it now earns be Over a but Why polystyrene should get into bed with a chemical stranger like pro baffles literally thousands of polymer pairs have been screened to see if they will form plastic the vast majority will not even Only 60 alloys have been discovered to what is needed is a Means for picking out the More Likely that is what Donald Paul and his colleges of the University of Texas Are trying do looking at the de tailed geometry of polymers to spot the physical structures amenable to they think they Are getting close to the if they tailor making polymer alloys to order could become common practice within a metallurgists had it their own Way for so Long they stood As strange new materials muscled into the they Are rising they Are trying to hit Back in two different one is to Telescope their production processes so there Are fewer Energy absorbing stages be tween the Ore and the finished the other involves juggling with the Way atoms in a Metal stack to yield properties Undre amt of one of metals More successful answers to plastics has been powder metallurgy in which Metal granules Are pressed and sintered cooked gently at temperatures below the materials melting Point into the shape of a thermoplastics Worth the Cost specially thermoplastics have a Trump with a Little heat they can be easily moulded or extruded to form finished that is so much cheaper than Machin ing a Metal it also wastes much less material in the that makes them Worth paying the prices of thermoplastics Range from per tonne for common ones like Nylon to Over per tonne for special resins they Are much More expensive than any of the ceramics or glasses whose jobs they can although they remain a Small accounting for 14 of total sales they comprise just 5 of All plastics so the name of the research game now is to Engineer new uses for specially plastics by tinkering with their chemical the results emerging include j Nylon is finding a new role in the motor Industry As an injection moulded material reinforced with strands of Mica or the composite is far More rigid and will withstand higher temperatures than Ordinary u polycarbonate is so Tough it can barely be scratched with a knife hence its use in Vandal proof Street but it has an Achilles Heel paint it and it can shatter with a gentle what seems to happen is that once the Brittle paint film is stresses build up at the Bottom of the microscopic crack in the polycarbonate the molecular Bond Between the paint and the plastic acts As a focusing toe motorcyclists be warned if paint you use a Glass Fibre helmet not a polycarbonate i d polyurethane foam commonly used for insulation and packaging is being used increasingly in the motor Industry As Cru Shable bumpers and Interior but consumer groups do not like its use in Home furnishings it gives off toxic gases when q aromatic thermoplastics Promise much safer most polymers Are aliphatic materials made of Daisy chains of Carbon and Hydrogen polystyrene is typical easily softened by heat and Embritt led by aromatic by have lots of stable ring shaped groups in their molecular chains that make them More impregnable to they Are difficult to ignite at All and give off Little smoke when they do l polyamides Are the Best High temperature plastics but Are difficult to extrude or so researchers Are introducing so called Amide groups into the materials replacing some of its oxygen atoms with Carbon and Hydrogen atoms making a bit More the resulting polyamide nude is not As Good at withstand ing temperature but can be c thermoplastic elastomers Are the result of a plastics foray into mixing polystyrene and natural rubber yields a plastic pudding 01 a containing rubbery these act As Shock giving the Brittle poly Styrene Good Impact thermoplastic elastomers using synthetic rather than natural rubber Are now on the although poor substitutes for real they can be shaped and formed More injection moulded types As with the injection moulding machine for there is no waste in this parts made from powder can even outperform ones machined from solid Metal because during manufacture the material gets banged around metallurgists Are also taking a fresh look at some of their old standbys like stainless it has been known since 1912 that steels containing about 20 of chromium Are especially Good at resisting Over the years a family of stainless steels has been each tailored to different tasks Austen Itic for kitchenware and chemical Ferritin for car Martens tic for machine but they All have one problem above or their corrosion resistance this is where the atomic juggling comes metals acquire their properties from their Crystal Structure that from the Way the atoms align themselves when the molten Metal scientists at Britain atomic Energy research have managed to squeeze aluminium atoms into stainless steels atomic lattice of Iron and chromium to provide extra Armour the aluminium seeps to the surface to form an impregnable Alumina in there is nothing Clever in but the scientists have gone one step their trick is to pin the whole atomic Structure together with big fat rivets of yttrium so resistant to corrosion is their new Alloy called feral it can be used in the most hostile of up to temperatures of Over it makes Ideal heating coils for the insides of it has also become the car Industry answer to its search for a catalyst exhaust system that will least for at least traps Loose atoms yttrium also looks like being a Handy answer to another of the steelmakers oldest enemies the Loose Hydrogen that free ranges through wreaking havoc along Crystal boundaries and so causing yttrium is a Large atom that attracts trapping the Loose Hydrogen yttrium ions charged atoms Are fired into the steel by a powerful Electron the called Ion implants has been borrowed from the Silicon hip metallurgists at nuclear research centres like Sandia laboratories in new Harwell in Britain and Karlsruhe in West Germany Are using Ion implantation to trap All manner of Metal weakening it is also allowing them to put exceptionally Tough coatings on metals to provide hard wearing cutting bearings and die bombarding metals with charged particles can also pull off another the top few layers of atoms on a metals surface can be mangled so that their neat crystalline order is completely broken the result is an amorphous surface like with no crystals in a Good thing in Many or rather the Grain boundaries Between Are the cause of most of a metals it is along Grain boundaries that cracks and corrosion gets a foothold by first attacking one Crystal and then spreading through the Metal by hop Ping from Crystal to so Why not make metals without crystals easier said than when cooled from the molten metals freeze like ice into a crystallized solid Long before they reach their so called Glass temperature where they could be expected to become there a Twenty years scientists at the California Institute of technology found that if a Metal they used a Gold Silicon Alloy was cooled exceedingly it would pass straight through the freezing Point and become Glassy amorphous before realizing the Cooling has to be done at a rate around one Pillion degrees a that actually is not m hot the product is a whisper ribbon of Glassy Metal Only a few thousandths of an Inch is not determining Industry from trying to commercialize Glassy one leading razor for sees Glassy metals for the Blade of the Challenge remains one thing is Clear the Blacksmith Era of Meta making is drawing to a new combinations of metals will be devised under the Microscope by Subtle interception of the electrons whirling found their Parent the Challenge that remains is to go one step beyond Mere alloys to form True compounds of the revolution in manmade materials aimed at mimick ing some of the properties of Wood began with Glass Fibre reinforced plastics Gap in the Early Tough Glass fibres buried within a soft polyester resin endowed the plastic with a strength and stiffness it could never have hoped to possess on its but Early Gap processes now look a relic from the composite Stone the British motor components is amassing a great Deal of knowhow for using Carbon Fibre for such things As truck transmission shafts and highly stressed parts within but even after a decade of develop the cheapest grades of Carbon Fibre Are still around a the Best Glass by costs about a and the Fibre developed by Dupont in the mid1960s Manly for car with a strength Midway Between Glass and Carbon Sells for about a so some composite scientists Are searching for a cheaper substitute for the synthetic polymer poly acrylonitrile now used As the starting material to get the hairline Carbon pitch is the front runner at the a Good decades research lies finding a cheaper Fibre is Only half the a wider Range of materials in which to wrap the fila ments is also at one Roll Royce Aero engine researchers who pioneered the Industrial use of Carbon fibres thought they might be Able to stick them into an aluminium matrix to make Turbine Blades for the hotter parts of their Jet the Carbon was found to attack the forming a Brittle Carbide that weakened the trick still being sought other scientists have tried to put Carbon fibres into the new generation of super ceramics like Silicon Carbide see the they would be the ultimate of engineering easily capable of withstanding All the High temperature and stress of the angriest of they Are still trying to manage the take a form of Silico Carbide Ceramic developed by Britain reactor fuel element it is Only half the weight of hardly Ever wears is virtually puts up with Metal shattering blasts of heat and cold and keeps its strength and rigidity at temperatures that make metals behave like cooked Spaght snags super ceramics like Silicon Carbide and its stable Silicon Are so hard they Are almost impossible to machine into that Means they must be shaped into accurately finished components while still in the Clay before potters do this All the but never to engineering during the firing a Ceramic can shrink up to one trick the nuclear Industry has found is to use plastic much As the Bronze sculptor uses the Ceramic ingredients Are first mixed with a cheap rolled into shape and then baked in an oven at around until the plastic has the sponge like material is then heated in a Furnace at a scorching with either Graphite or nitrogen to form a fully dense Luperce Ramic one with All its sponge holes filled such ceramics shrink by Only 1 or so when so engineering components can be virtually fired to aluminium could Well be the material hit the hardest by ceramics like future car for Are Likely to use Silicon nitride for their Cylinder steel made easy old strip Mill process Roll into slab o j Roll Back and Forth heat More rolling finished steel new powder process k molten steel Lay on Roll Cook conveyor Flat gently powder rim mix into slurry finished Roll Cook Rou ;