NLMK VP Receives Adolf Martens Award for Ultrahigh-Strength Steel Research

Dr. Bruno Charles De Cooman, NLMK Group Vice President for Research and Development, has been awarded the prestigious Adolf Martens Memorial Steel Lecture for his research into the properties of ultrahigh-strength steels.

The award ceremony took place on 10 October at the Material Science & Technology 2017 International conference in Pittsburgh (USA).

This award was established by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology (AIST) in 2010 to honor Adolf Martens, a pioneer in metallography, and recognizes the achievement of significant scientific accomplishments that have enabled important advances in processing and product application in the field of ferrous metallurgy.

Dr De Cooman’s presentation was titled “Mechanical Twinning in Formable Advanced Ultrahigh-Strength Steel”. Research in advanced ultra-high strength steels, i.e. steels with a tensile strength higher that 1000MPa, is aimed at obtaining steels that are both much stronger and much more formable than conventional steel grades. The key aspect of new steel design strategies is an enhanced strain hardening. This can be achieved by introducing an unusual deformation mechanism in steel: deformation twinning. During his presentation, Dr De Cooman showed that this deformation phenomenon not only occurred in the so-called TWIP (Twinning-induced plasticity) steels, but also in medium Mn steels, and Q&P (Quenching and Partitioning) steel.