Making complex composite materials to order

Making complex composite materials to order: "ScienceDaily (May 30, 2011) — A team of researchers at MIT has found a way to make complex composite materials whose attributes can be fine-tuned to give various desirable combinations of properties such as stiffness, strength, resistance to impacts and energy dissipation." The key feature of the new composites is a "co-continuous" structure of two different materials with very different properties, creating a material combining aspects of both. The co-continuous structure means that the two interleaved materials each form a kind of three-dimensional lattice whose pieces are fully connected to each other from side to side, front to back, and top to bottom.

New way to make lighter, stronger steel -- in a flash

New way to make lighter, stronger steel -- in a flash: "ScienceDaily (June 10, 2011) — A Detroit entrepreneur surprised university engineers in Ohio recently, when he invented a heat-treatment that makes steel 7 percent stronger than any steel on record -- in less than 10 seconds.

In fact, the steel, now trademarked as Flash Bainite, has tested stronger and more shock-absorbing than the most common titanium alloys used by industry.
Now the entrepreneur is working with researchers at Ohio State University to better understand the science behind the new treatment, called flash processing.

Metallic glass: A crystal at heart

Metallic glass: A crystal at heart: "ScienceDaily (June 16, 2011) — Glass, by definition, is amorphous; its atoms lack order and are arranged every which way. But when scientists squeezed tiny samples of a metallic glass under high pressure, they got a surprise: The atoms lined up in a regular pattern to form a single crystal."