mtex examples with data

I have been doing a bit of play using mtex to look at some EBSD data which I previous exported to .ctf format. mtex is an open source (GPL) software, which written for the commercial matlab software. The mtex package comes along with several examples and tutorials which can be read within matlab or over the http-internet-web.

Example scripts for using mtex are also available to download from the recently published paper “On Three-Dimensional Misorientation Spaces” by Krakow etal. published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 473, 2017.

Scripts and EBSD data for the case studies in the paper are available here:

https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/263510

Scripts for producing other figures in the paper (explaining orientation relations etc.) are available from the mtex website here (along with other examples):

https://mtex-toolbox.github.io/publications.html

Tools for visualisation of citation networks – looking at Bainite literature

VOSviewer and CiteNetExplorer are a couple of tools for analysing and visualising patterns in scientific literature. These tools are freely available to use and distribute java programs (working on Windows, MacOS and Linux for example) written by researchers at Leiden University.

To get going, first we do a search on web of science, then download data as a list of “Full Record and Cited References” as a Tab-delimited file, in blocks of 500 entries (manually select to download record 1-500, 501-1000, etc. Then these files can be opened in both VOSviewer and CiteNetExplorer. For example I conducted a search on the topic “Bainite”.

Now we have beautiful graphs that identify key papers in a field.

Criteria for weighting the links in the network, or grouping the publications, and how to represent the results can all be changed depending on the data being explored.

Properties of a nanostructured bainitic steel

In some recent work, we produced a nanostructured steel was produced using a clean steel-making technique. Hoping that applying VIM-VAR processing would achieve better mechanical properties by reducing tramp elements, like sulphur and phosphorous. Resulting in less problems of embrittlement by these elements and by manganese sulphide inclusions, etc.

No doubt these steels have impressive combinations of properties. We had the chance to measure many different mechanical properties of the same batch of steel. Only complicated by the fact that we were trying to develop heat treatments to improve the properties at the same time.

These results have been published in Materials Science and Technology, here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02670836.2016.1271522

The maximum strength of the material recorded was 2.2 GPa at yield, with an ultimate tensile strength of 2.5 GPa, accompanied by a Charpy impact energy of 5 J, achieved by heat treatment to refine the prior austenite grain size from 145 to 20 µm. This increased the strength by 40% and the Charpy V-notch energy more than doubled. In terms of resistance of the hardness to tempering, the behaviour observed was similar to previous alloys. Despite reducing the hardness and strength, tempering was observed to reduce the plane-strain fracture toughness.

Superbainite on stage at Apollo theatre

Dyanamic test austempered ductile iron

Drs Dawid Myszka, A. Wieczorek and Tadeusz Cybula from the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland investigated the influence of microstructure on the dynamic mechanical properties of austempered ductile iron using Taylor impact testing. Austempered dictile iron means it’s a cast iron, so has graphite particles in a matrix heat treated to become bainite!. Taylor impact testing means you fire cylinders of the material at an immovable object and see how the material gets squished.

Deforming Austempered Ductile Iron

Shattering Austempered Ductile Iron

The heavily deformed volume which faced the impact has resulted in hardening and in transformation to martensite — both hardness and magnetic measurements have been used. Hardening was due to mostly strain induced austenite-to-martensite transformation, and also due to cold-work.

References
D. Myszka, L. Cybula and A. Wievzorek
Influence of heat treatment conditions on microstructure and mechanical properties of austempered ductile iron after dynamic deformation test
Archives of Metallurgy and Materials
V59, Issue 3, 2014

DOI:10.2478/amm-2014-0204