Modern Metallurgy: Case Studies on Alloys and their Properties

In this course, students discover some of the guiding principles of metallurgy to know and understand the relationship between processes, microstructure, and properties of metal alloys.
Through active case study learning, students are able to:

interpret binary phase diagrams and transformation diagrams,
predict alloy microstructures that may result from solidification and heat treatments,
discuss the physical mechanisms involved in plastic deformation.

Thermodynamics, phase diagrams, crystallography, defects in crystalline structures.

Notions of properties and structure

General introduction,
Case studies : A combination of materials and properties
Macroscopic properties and bond types: how to predict a property or behavior through knowledge of chemical bonds

Crystalline defects and their role in property modification

Introduction
Reminders on the nature of defects in crystalline materials,
The role of atomic diffusion in property modifications (surface and volume), (Solid and liquid phase diffusion)

First and second Fick's law ( hetero-diffusion and self-diffusion)
Solid phase diffusion: Surface modification
( ex. carburization)
Liquid-phase diffusion: solute rejection phenomenon
( segregation during solidification)

Surface modification by a coating
Case studies

Changes in metal properties

Hardening mechanisms : role of stress fields imposed by defects on dislocation mobility
Hardening by strain-hardening of metals and alloys
Hardening by grain size refinement
Hardening by solid solution : (single-phase alloys)
Hardening by a second phase or structural hardening
Germination and growth of precipitates (homogeneous and heterogeneous germination)
Hardening by insertion (transformations in steels)
Annealing and restoration of properties
Introduction to metallography (reading phase diagrams and microstructures, discovering the history of a material through metallography)

Inorganic Chemistry and Materials

Materials Sciences and Engineering: An introduction, William D. Callister and David G. Rethwisch, Ed. Wiley, 2018, ISBN: 978-1-119-40549-8.