Materials Research at CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory: An Overview

Steel is the most significant structural materials group. There are nearly 2500 steel grades and that offer a wide variety of property combinations required for many users. Many of the steel grades were recently modified or have been newly developed. Combined with new processing methods, they become an interesting and challenging field for engineers.

In recent years, with the increasing demand and the competition received from other materials, extensive research has been carried out to develop lighter and stronger grades of steel. In the automotive sector, the focus has been to make the automotive vehicle lighter and energy efficient without compromising on the safety standards. Railways have been the most effective mode of transportation and it is required to develop the track material which can sustain higher load and the higher running speed of train. In the lifting and excavation sector, the increasing cost for replacing worn parts and increased downtime associated with scheduled maintenance has set the driving force to develop steel with improved wear resistance and good impact toughness.

The major focus is to design steel compositions and apply novel processing routes or optimize the thermomechanical processing to achieve favourable phases of varying quantity and desirable morphology, as microstructural constituents.