ENGINEERS DEVELOP A TYPE OF STEEL WITH A RECORD-BREAKING ABILITY

 

A team of engineers has developed and tested a type of steel with a record-breaking ability to withstand an impact without deforming permanently. 

The new steel alloy could be used in a wide range of applications, from drill bits, to body armor for soldiers, to meteor-resistant casings for satellites.The material is an amorphous steel alloy, a promising subclass of steel alloys made of arrangements of atoms that deviate from steel's classical crystal-like structure, where iron atoms occupy specific locations.

Researchers are increasingly looking to amorphous steel as a source of new materials that are affordable to manufacture, incredibly hard, but at the same time, not brittle. The researchers believe their work on the steel alloy, named SAM2X5-630, is the first to investigate how amorphous steels respond to shock.

SAM2X5-630 has the highest recorded elastic limit for any steel alloy, according to the researchers--essentially the highest threshold at which the material can withstand an impact without deforming permanently. The alloy can withstand pressure and stress of up to 12.5 giga-Pascals or about 125,000 atmospheres without undergoing permanent deformations.

The researchers, from the University of California, San Diego, the University of Southern California and the California Institute of Technology, describe the material's fabrication and testing in a recent issue of Nature Scientific Reports.