Hi everyone! I know this usually belong to general discussion but considering there is a high percentage of metallurgy enthusiasts here (I'm looking at you Cobalt!). I thought it would be nice to post it here. (If its out of place please move it to the general board. It is Jerry's home after all and I do want to respect that).
I work at a university and my field of research is carbon electronics. Which means I sometime work with carbon composites like carbon nanotube-polymer. Although I mostly work with polymers, every now and then metal-carbon composite publications appear in my radar. Yep, you guessed it, carbon steel!
Here is a few things before we get down to brass tacks:
-Woots steel used in the original damascus swords was found to have some carbon nanotube in it, an extremely strong and fiberous form of carbon. Its a bit like steel I-beams in concrete buildings it heavily reinforces the composite.
-Ancient blacksmiths astonishingly made this by trial and error over the years such as forging and smelting the steel in certain seasons etc...
-Its fabrication method however is lost to history and we don't have a documented record of how exactly it was made.
The one below (freely available from researchnet) was quite interesting so I thought it would be nice to share.
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...esa_review/links/0fcfd50b42615da658000000.pdf
What I found interesting in particular was:
-Recently, carbon nanotube has been incorporated into metals such as nickel and copper. One that is particularly interesting to us is the powder method. There are many high grade knife steel available that is made by sintering metal powder. Like elmax if I'm not mistaken. The trick is to mix these carbon nanotubes into the metal powder before sintering them to achieve good distribution. Good distribution = good homogeneous reinforcement (as I found from my own research as well). There are other methods of mixing too.
-Metals like aluminium has shown tensile strengths improvement of 129% with 5vol% of carbon nanotube addition. In the case of titanium it was 450% increase in hardness and 60% increase in elastic modulus (carbon nanotube content not published however). A substantial increase in both.
-Now this is where it gets interesting for us knife fans, wear and friction property. with 2 vol% incorporation of carbon nanotubes they reported a 83% decrease in wear volume and 60% decrease in coefficient of friction (for nickel-phosphorous-carbon nanotube coating). Again a substantial decrease in both. Cutting through those fire wood must feel a lot more lubricated if you were to have a knife made out of these!
-Corrosion rate of nickel-carbon nanotube was 5 times less to that of a pure nickel. Attributed to the inert nature of carbon nanotube and the removal of voids and pores (I've found this as well when I was making carbon nanotube-polyurethane foams, carbon nanotube is effectively a needle so it pops the bubbles). No nucleation site for corrosion = less corrosion.
Now from experience I know that its not a good idea to take anything for gospel. Even if it is a scientific publication. Some tell tale signs are the lack of details such as the concentration of carbon nanotube added to the metal on some results. However from my own experience with composites I think the logic is fairly sound. I think I'm not the only one here who would be excited if Busse made its own variant of the original damascus steel too!
Sorry for the long post, have a lovely evening everyone!
Bit of disclaimer:
-I'm not a metallurgist I'm drawing parallels from my composite research.
-Any science is a fair bit more than what meets the eye. Usually there are technical challenges that is not immediately apparent. Like how the carbon nanotube would react to quenching or to other impurities like chrome, sulphur and silicon.
-They have not tested it on iron so the jury is still out on that.
I work at a university and my field of research is carbon electronics. Which means I sometime work with carbon composites like carbon nanotube-polymer. Although I mostly work with polymers, every now and then metal-carbon composite publications appear in my radar. Yep, you guessed it, carbon steel!
Here is a few things before we get down to brass tacks:
-Woots steel used in the original damascus swords was found to have some carbon nanotube in it, an extremely strong and fiberous form of carbon. Its a bit like steel I-beams in concrete buildings it heavily reinforces the composite.
-Ancient blacksmiths astonishingly made this by trial and error over the years such as forging and smelting the steel in certain seasons etc...
-Its fabrication method however is lost to history and we don't have a documented record of how exactly it was made.
The one below (freely available from researchnet) was quite interesting so I thought it would be nice to share.
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...esa_review/links/0fcfd50b42615da658000000.pdf
What I found interesting in particular was:
-Recently, carbon nanotube has been incorporated into metals such as nickel and copper. One that is particularly interesting to us is the powder method. There are many high grade knife steel available that is made by sintering metal powder. Like elmax if I'm not mistaken. The trick is to mix these carbon nanotubes into the metal powder before sintering them to achieve good distribution. Good distribution = good homogeneous reinforcement (as I found from my own research as well). There are other methods of mixing too.
-Metals like aluminium has shown tensile strengths improvement of 129% with 5vol% of carbon nanotube addition. In the case of titanium it was 450% increase in hardness and 60% increase in elastic modulus (carbon nanotube content not published however). A substantial increase in both.
-Now this is where it gets interesting for us knife fans, wear and friction property. with 2 vol% incorporation of carbon nanotubes they reported a 83% decrease in wear volume and 60% decrease in coefficient of friction (for nickel-phosphorous-carbon nanotube coating). Again a substantial decrease in both. Cutting through those fire wood must feel a lot more lubricated if you were to have a knife made out of these!
-Corrosion rate of nickel-carbon nanotube was 5 times less to that of a pure nickel. Attributed to the inert nature of carbon nanotube and the removal of voids and pores (I've found this as well when I was making carbon nanotube-polyurethane foams, carbon nanotube is effectively a needle so it pops the bubbles). No nucleation site for corrosion = less corrosion.
Now from experience I know that its not a good idea to take anything for gospel. Even if it is a scientific publication. Some tell tale signs are the lack of details such as the concentration of carbon nanotube added to the metal on some results. However from my own experience with composites I think the logic is fairly sound. I think I'm not the only one here who would be excited if Busse made its own variant of the original damascus steel too!
Sorry for the long post, have a lovely evening everyone!
Bit of disclaimer:
-I'm not a metallurgist I'm drawing parallels from my composite research.
-Any science is a fair bit more than what meets the eye. Usually there are technical challenges that is not immediately apparent. Like how the carbon nanotube would react to quenching or to other impurities like chrome, sulphur and silicon.
-They have not tested it on iron so the jury is still out on that.
