News & Update

JOM, Oct 2007

In addition to the Sandia grant, the DOE has awarded more than $6 million to storage projects at Argonne National Laboratory, Miami University, United Technologies Research Center, and the University of Hawaii.

Researchers Develop New Austenitic Stainless Steels

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new class of austenitic stainless steels that are both creep resistant and capable of alumina scale formation for oxidation/ corrosion protection. These new alloys offer the potential for higher operating temperatures in aggressive oxidizing environments encountered in energy production, such as turbines and boilers, as well as for the chemical and process industries.

Conventional austenitic stainless steels rely on chromia scales for protection, which are not as effective as alumina in many industrially relevant environments, the researchers report. The alloys created by the Oak Ridge team are based on Fe-20Ni-14Cr-2.5Al weight percent, with strengthening achieved through nanodispersions of NbC. Protective Al.,0, scale formation was achieved with smaller amounts of aluminum in austenitic alloys than previously used, provided that the titanium and vanadium alloying additions frequently used for strengthening were eliminated. The smaller amounts of aluminum permitted stabilization of the austenitic matrix structure and made it possible to obtain excellent creep resistance.

"To our knowledge, this is the first time creep resistance and alumina scale formation have been achieved in an iron-based alloy, at comparable cost to conventional stainless steel alloys," said Michael P. Brady, senior R&D staff member at Oak Ridge and a coauthor of the research.

The paper, "Creep-Resistant, A1,0,Forming Austenitic Stainless Steels," was published in the journal Science.

U.S. National Science Foundation Plans to Emphasize Transformative Research

The U.S. National Science Board (NSB) has approved a motion by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Arden L. Bement, Jr., to enhance support of transformative research at the foundation. In pursuit of this goal, the board also approved a change to the intellectual merit review criterion for funding proposals that specifically includes evaluation for potentially transformative concepts. These decisions were reached at a meeting of the board in Arlington, Virginia, in August.

At the board's last meeting in May, the NSB issued a report, titled Enhancing Support of Transformative Research at the National Science Foundation, that included a recommendation that the NSF "develop a distinct, Foundation-wide Transformative Research initiative." The board defined transformative research as "research that has the capacity to revolutionize existing fields, create new subfields, cause paradigm shifts, support discovery, and lead to radically new technologies."

In response to this charge. Bernent proposed a three-part strategy to the NSB Task Force on Transformative Research. Under his proposal, the NSF would: