Principal investigator: Calixto Isaac Garcia

University: University of Pittsburgh

Industry partner: United States Steel Corporation Research and Technology Center

Pennsylvania has a strong manufacturing community serving the defense, aerospace, power generation, shipbuilding, and automotive industries. Innovations in the conventional metals industry will continue to advance and can be enhanced by a vital government-industrial-academic relationship such as envisioned by the Pennsylvania Manufacturing Fellows Initiative. United States Steel Corporation (U.S. Steel) provides steels to a wide range of customers. In the past decade, flat-rolled steel has developed into a “high-tech” material especially for automotive applications, an example is the Advanced High Strength Steels. U.S. Steel offers an evolving manufacturing footprint, planning capital investments in the Pittsburgh industrial region and other places, supporting these innovative products. U.S. Steel has partnered with the University Of Pittsburgh supporting research and students in ferrous physical metallurgy. Recently, U.S. Steel announced a new casting and rolling facility to be built at Mon Valley Works. This new facility represents a significant difference in processing parameters compared to current production routes, which might significantly influence the behavior of alloying elements and impact the critical mechanical properties of new advanced steel grades. This project would focus on understanding the precipitation behavior expected in the new production process and compare it with behavior observed in existing thick-slab and thin-slab production routes. The overall strategy is to characterize all aspects of microstructures and precipitation species using modern electron optics analytical techniques. The first goal is to conduct physical modeling of the ESP process. This step employs the unidirectional solidification technique and direct hot charging to the laboratory hot rolling mill. The second goal is to study the effect of reheating prior to hot rolling. The third and final goal is to compare the microstructure and precipitation behavior with existing processing paths. An important component of this project involves the education of engineering students to solve real problems.