A Proposal for Partial Financial Support for an International Meeting on Surface Hardening of Stainless Steel; Materials Park, OH; October 22-23, 2007

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TECHNICAL: In recent years, impressive surface hardening of stainless steels has been achieved using a variety of low temperature carburization and nitridation technologies. In spite of the budding commercial activity in this field, recognition that tribological properties of a variety of stainless steels can be significantly improved and without serious degradation in other properties has not garnered general industrial recognition in the USA. Furthermore, with the exception of one small meeting in Japan in 2000, this topic has also not received much attention from the academic materials community, particularly in the U.S. In view of this, Case Western Reserve University would host and sponsor an International Conference on Surface Hardening of Stainless Steel, on behalf of the ASM Heat Treatment Society. The meeting will be held on the Case campus on October 22 and 23, 2007; ASM International, located ~20 miles from the Case campus in Materials Park, Ohio, will handle the logistical details of publicity, registration, lodgings, etc. for participants. The meeting is co-sponsored by NSF, TMS, ONR, and Swagelok. The Program Committee, in addition to Heuer, includes G. M. Michal, F. Ernst, and H. Kahn of CWRU; S. R. Collins and P. C. Williams of Swagelok; M. A. J. Somers of the Technical University of Denmark; and J. P. Riviere of the University of Poitiers, France. Heuer and Collins are Chair and Co-Chair, respectively. NON-TECHNICAL: In addition to the improved tribological properties, both the fatigue resistance and corrosion resistance of austenitic stainless steels such as 316L are dramatically improved by low temperature carburization, with essentially no impact on component ductility. Because of these advances, and the existence of many potential industrial applications ('low hanging fruit'), a significant impact of this conference will be to bring the existence of these important advances to the attention of the relevant industrial community. In a similar vein, there are many opportunities for academic research. The recognition that single phase austenitic solid solutions containing more than 10 at % interstitial carbon (including the possibility of austenitic stainless steels that are ferromagnetic at room temperature) suggests a host of interesting physical metallurgy and solid state physics research topics. The funds requested from NSF will be used to offset participant costs, particularly for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty from U.S. universities. An email letter will be sent to all Chairs of Materials departments in the U.S., advising them of the existence of travel/registration scholarships to attend the meeting and noting that preference will be given in awarding these scholarships to women and other under-represented minorities. It is anticipated that this meeting will be the first in a triennial ASM/TMS series on this topic. Successful negotiations have now been concluded to have some of the presentations submitted as a group for peer-review and eventual publication in a single issue of Met. Trans. A.