Metallurgy Becomes a Science

Materials science has in its time suffered a great deal of the second type of criticism. Thus Calvert (1997) asserts that metallurgy remains a proper discipline, with fundamental theories, methods and boundaries. Things fell apart when the subject extended to become materials science, with the growing use of polymers, ceramics, glasses and composites in engineering. The problem is that all materials are different and we no longer have a discipline. ... 

Despite many recent advances in material science and engineering, the performance of ceramic components in severe conditions is still far below the ideal limits predicted by theory. Modem ceramics have been primarily the products of applied physics and parallel the developments of physical metallurgy. The emphasis on the relation between behavior and microstructure has been fruitful for ceramic scientists for several decades. It has been recently realized, however, that major advances in ceramics during the next several decades will require an emphasis on molecular-level control. Organic chemistry, once abhorred by ceramic engineers trained to define ceramics as inorganic-nonmetallic materials, has become a valuable source of new ceramics. It has recently become known that as the stmctural scale in ceramics is reduced from macro to micro and to nano crystalline regimes, the basic properties are drastically altered. A brittle ceramic material has been shown to be partially ductile, for example. 

Shock-compression science, which has developed and matured since its inception in 1955. has never before been documented in book form. Over this period, shock-compression research has provided numerous major contributions to scientific and industrial technology. As a result, our knowledge of geophysics, planetary physics, and astrophysics has substantially improved, and shock processes have become standard industrial methods in materials synthesis and processing. Characterizations of shock-compressed matter have been broadened and enriched with involvements of the fields of physics, electrical engineering, solid mechanics, metallurgy, geophysics, and materials science... 

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