01/24/2006 -
Structure-Property Relations in Nonferrous Metals (2005)
by Alan M. Russell and Kok Loong Lee
ISBN 0-471-64952-X. Wiley Interscience, Hoboken, New Jersey. 2005. Hardcover. 499 pages. $125.
The authors of this book have managed to accomplish the difficult task of creating a text that is informative and useful for the practicing engineer, as well as interesting and instructional for the student of metallurgy. The text is quite readable and there are plentiful charts, graphs, and illustrations that aid in understanding the material and help to hold the interest of the reader.
The book is divided into two distinct parts. Part I consists of nine chapters that offer an overview of physical metallurgy written at a level satisfactory for upper-level undergraduate students. Included in Part I are chapters on amorphous metals and quasi-crystals, processing, and metal-matrix composites in addition to the more classical physical metallurgy topics (bonding and structure, defects, diffusion, dislocations, recrystallization, strengthening mechanisms, etc.). These sections review much of the material that would be covered in the metals section of an introductory course in materials science using texts such as Callister, Shackleford, or Askeland, but expand the discussion so the reader can gain a greater appreciation for many of the concepts. For example, this text goes into a nice discussion on stacking fault energy and its effect on extended dislocations and how this influences cross-slip in the metal. Another example of more in-depth discussion is the entire chapter on strain rate effects including creep, superplasticity, and shock deformation, where the reader gains a real mechanistic understanding of these topics. Such material is generally beyond the scope of that included in introductory books on materials science.
The authors are able to maintain the interest of the reader through these sections by keeping the focus on applications and by using real examples, including photographs, micrographs, and data. As in many texts, the information that maintains the reader's interest is included in sidebars that are distributed throughout all chapters. The section on fracture and fatigue, for example, briefly discusses the failure of Aloha Airlines flight 243 in a sidebar.
Part II of the text contains information and discussion on each of the 82 metals other than iron. The chapters are arranged to include all metals from a given column of the periodic table in the same chapter with the actinide and lanthanide metals included as separate chapters in their own right. Many of the metals are introduced by a comparative chart showing the relative density, strength, modulus, conductivity, and cost of that element, in addition to other properties. While each chapter is different in the material covered, there is generally some discussion of the availability of the metal, extraction techniques, and commercial availability and use. For the important engineering metals, there is substantial and extended discussion on various alloys and the structure-property relationships of each. For example, the section covering nickel includes several pages describing nickel-based superalloys, their composition, structure, and strengthening mechanisms. Carbides and heat treatments for the ideal gamma prime structures are included, and topologically close-packed phases and PHACOMP analysis are described in a sidebar of this section. Less important metals receive a reduced discussion, with those such as the heavy actinides having only a few sentences each describing the metals.
In addition to solid technical information on each of the metals, there are some interesting tidbits of information strewn throughout. For example, the Sudbury basin ore body in Canada was created by the impact of an asteroid about 10 km in diameter, and the surrounding region is rich in Cu, Ni, Co, Fe, Au, Ag, Te, Se, and Pt metals. The dollar sign, $, derives from a symbol on the Spanish dollar of a pair of baroque columns wrapped in an S-shaped swirl of ribbon. Uranium deposits in Gabon indicate that natural fission reactors existed far underground about 1.8 billion years ago. cadmium poisoning (Itai-Itai disease) occurred in Japan after rice crops were irrigated using wastewater from a cadmium mine. These tidbits and many others are interspersed throughout the book, both within the main text and as sidebars. In addition, many sections begin with a quote on something related to the material in that section. The reader is treated to quotes from Einstein, Shakespeare, Emily Post, James Bond, and numerous others introducing topics throughout the text. These are sometimes merely amusing, but some offer additional food for thought during the study of this book.
While reviewing this text, I have been teaching a senior-level course in metallic materials and have used the book liberally as a source for both technical and interesting information about the various metals covered in the course. Reasonable problem sets are included on a web site as part of this text. This offers to the serious student an opportunity to test and expand his or her understanding of the topics presented.
Of course, this text will not assist in gaining an in-depth understanding of a particular metal or alloy system since it is so comprehensive in its coverage of all metals. Some of the material on certain metals is so brief, it might well be left out altogether, but there is some satisfaction to having all metals in one text. The other criticism I have is not of the text, but the downloaded information from the web site. The problem sets are useful to an instructor, but the few figures and tables that are included on the web site are minor and do not contribute anything positive. There is, however, a potentially useful appendix on the web site that includes structure designation of many of the possible alloys and compounds.
I recommend this text for an undergraduate course in physical metallurgy and properties of non-ferrous metals. It is also an interesting read and reference book for the practicing engineer who requires some superficial knowledge of many different metals and alloy systems. Part II of the text would also be interesting and readable for the non-specialist who wants to gain some understanding of the different non-ferrous metals and their alloys.
For more on Structure-Property Relations in Nonferrous Metals, visit the Wiley web site.
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