SECTION III 

 RESEARCH IN THE IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY 



By Frank T. Sisco 

 Metallurgist, and Editor, Alloys of Iron Research, New York, N. Y. 



ABSTRACT 



Research by the iron and steel industry of the United 

 States (and of other countries as well) is carried out for 

 the purpose of improving methods of manufacture and 

 quality of products, reducing cost, developing new 

 products, new uses and new markets for old products. 

 In addition the tcclmical staff's of the industry carry 

 out considerable research jointly with the users of steel 

 and act as consultants to steel consumers who have no 

 research laboratory of their own. During the last 10 

 years the average expenditure for research has varied 

 between $8 million and $10 million per year, more than 

 10 times the amount it was 15 years ago. Although 

 the industrj' as a whole reduces its expenditures for 

 research in depression years, the reduction is never pro- 

 portional to reduced production. As a result the num- 

 ber of reports of research published increases greatly 

 in depression years. 



Large steel companies have a central research lab- 

 oratory in which research of value to the company as a 

 whole is carried out, which acts as a training school for 

 plant metallurgists, and which cooperates on important 

 problems with the technical men in the various mills. 

 Research personnel is largely college trained and in- 

 cludes metallurgists, chemists, engineers of various 



kinds, and many others, about one-quarter or one-third 

 of whom hold doctors' degrees. 



Although considerable cooperative research is done 

 by the iron and steel industry of the United States, this 

 phase of research has not been developed to such an 

 extent as in Germany and England. Research for the 

 benefit of the entire industry, for which the industry 

 as a whole supplies the funds and institutes and univer- 

 sities supply the facilities, is the weakest phase of 

 ferrous metallurgical research in the United States. 



The economic consequences of research by the iron 

 and steel industry in all the principal steel-making 

 countries have been far reaching. Pig iron, carbon 

 steel, and alloy steels are being produced to quality 

 standards unheard of 20 years ago; moreover, this im- 

 provement in quality has been attained wdth no in- 

 crease, and in some instances with a large decrease in 

 cost. Increasing the quality of carbon steel, developing 

 a new series of cheap, high-strength, low-alloy steels, 

 and producing stainless steels in large tonnages have 

 revolutionized automotive and aircraft design and have 

 produced changes in transportation, oil refining, and 

 other industries with remarkable savings in cost and 

 increase in efficiency. 



Research, as carried out in the iron and steel industry, 

 may be divided into two general classes; viz, process 

 and materials research, and fundamental research. 

 Process and materials research is naturally the most 

 important and widely practiced and has a fourfold pur- 

 pose: (1) Improving quality, (2) improving methods of 

 manufacture and reducing cost, (3) developing new 

 products, and (4) developing new uses and new markets 

 for old products. 



Fundamental research in the iron and steel industry 

 seeks to discover the underlying causes of metallurgical 

 phenomena; its primary aim is to add to metallurgical 

 knowledge, and it is usually carried out in the universities 

 and technical schools, in cooperative research institutes, 

 or in Government laboratories; only a relatively small 

 part has been done in steel-works laboratories. On the 



other hand, most of the process and materials research 

 is carried out by the steel industry, although the staffs 

 of some universities and research institutes direct more 

 effort to ferrous materials and processes than to the 

 fxmdamentals of metallurgy. 



The Role of the American Iron and Steel 

 Industry in the Development of Research 



Most of the great developments in the iron and steel 

 industry occurred in the last half of the nineteenth 

 century. As showni in table 1, nearlj' 40 percent of 

 these originated m England where the industrial revolu- 

 tion had been under way for nearly a century, far 

 longer than in any other part of the |world. Of |the 

 other countries which are now leaders in iron and steel 

 production, the United States, Germany, and France 



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