Department of Ferrous Metallurgy (IEHK)
The Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy provides teaching and research in the areas of steel production and processing, and also in the application of metallic materials. The university course, as well as the classes offered as continuing education, has practical relevance and high scientific quality. The research projects are based on fundamental principles, and, at the same time, are application oriented; the projects take up current issues and make a scientific contribution to addressing the problems of the industry.
The teaching and research at IEHK are organized by Professor Wolfgang Bleck, Head of the Institute and Chair for Ferrous Metallurgy, Professor Dieter Senk, Chair for Metallurgy of Iron and Steel, and Professor Sebastian Münstermann, Group for Integrity of Materials and Structures.
Department and Chair of Ferrous Metallurgy
Research fields in materials technology are divided in four research groups. The materials processing group investigates the processes and properties of steels during production and subsequent treatment. Materials characterization concentrates on steel properties from their determination with modern testing facilities and methods up to the development of new measurement techniques. Research in the integrative computational materials engineering group is aimed at the numerical modeling of microstructures and properties along process chains. The nano structured materials group aims at the understanding of nano and atomic scale parameters controlling phase tra nsformation and mechanical deformation towards achieving extraordinary material properties. In all research groups it is the overall aim to correlate microstructure and mechanical properties in order to forecast material behavior and with this conduct specific material design.
Chair of Metallurgy of Iron and Steel
The team of the Chair of Metallurgy of Iron and Steel is also subdivided into four groups with differing research focuses (Metallurgy of Iron and Steel, Casting Processes, Energy and Environment, Raw Materials and Recycling).
Integrity of Materials and Structures
The Group for Integrity of Materials and Structures is divided into four teams. It is the objective to improve the limit state analysis of mechanically stressed components. The emphasis is on the descriptions of strain hardening and failure mechanisms on different length scales. The first team, Structural Integrity, is primarily concerned with the development of concepts to fully exploit mechanical property profiles of structural materials in the framework of structural integrity assessments. In the second group, Lifetime Assessment, new concepts to numerically assess the component´s lifetime are developed and experimentally validated. The Damage Tolerance group deals with the microstructure based characterization of damage evolutions and damage tolerances of modern material concepts. Together the three groups form a complementary pattern and offer innovation potential for infrastructure and energy conversion equipment. As a cross-sectoral topic, the multi-axial component testing serves to validate the newly-developed concepts.