This course focuses on the basic of materials and technologies of interest for automotive and mechanical engineering. The aim of this course is to give students basic knowledge on metals and polymers and on their properties.
The course will establish the fundamentals of materials behaviour, in particular to their load carrying capacity as influenced by composition, microstructure, thermal and mechanical processing. The properties of the main classes of materials are presented, in particular mechanical and thermal properties. Attention is devoted to steels and their heat-treating procedures (e.g. bulk tempering and surface thermo-chemical treatments). The quenching and ageing processes of Al and Mg alloys will be fully described. Description of applications of selected classes of steels, Al, Mg, and Cu alloys is offered, together with the main classes of polymers, aiming to guide students toward material selection, design and quality assessment.

The main aim is to supply the student with a robust background in materials, able to couple scientific and technological knowledge in a synergic way, providing general guidelines for translating scientific knowledge into technological tools for engineering design.
The student will learn:
- the relation between materials atomic nature and their properties;
- how to exploit this scientific background in controlling the material properties up to the tailoring of materials application;
- how to select materials to fulfil design requirements;
- to develop a confident approach to materials and their properties;

The student is required to have a robust, basic knowledge of Chemistry and Physics.

Introduction on metals, polymers, basic notions on ceramics, glasses and composites.
Correlations structure/property of materials, Crystalline structure and defects, Amorphous structure, Plastic deformation. (10 hours). Mechanical and thermal properties, their relation to materials structure (20 hours). Phase diagrams (10 hours). Polymers: properties, uses and related technologies (10 hours).
Metallurgy - Metallic phases: cubic and hexagonal lattices. Interstitial and substitutional solid solutions. Hume-Rothery phases, Laves phases, carbides. The hardening mechanism of the metal alloys: strain hardening and softening, grain size, solid solution and 2nd phase precipitates.
Al alloys. Mechanical properties of biphasic alloys. Microstructure effect. Precipitation hardening of coherent and incoherent particles. G.P. zones, ƒá and ƒá¡¥ phases in Al-Cu alloys. Precipitation hardening after natural or artificial ageing. Thermo-mechanical treatments. Standards of Al-alloys. Mg and Cu alloys: principles and applications. Introduction to Ti alloys. (20 hrs.)
Thermal treatments of the steels: annealing, normalizing. Eutectoidic transformation. Curves of isothermal transformation, quenching. Martensitic transformation, Ms and Mf. Continuous cooling transformation curves. Effect of cooling rate on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the steels. Jominy test. Effect of alloying elements on the Jominy curves. Quenching cracks. Tempering and tempering embrittlement. Effect of Si, Mo and Cr. (10 hrs).
Flame and Induction surface hardening. Fundamentals and application.
Thermo-chemical treatments: endothermic and exothermic atmospheres. Quench and tempering cycles. Effect of thermo-chemical treatments for fatigue and wear resistance. Carburizing. Carbon potential of carburizing atmospheres. Influence of CO and CH4 in the carburizing. 1st and 2nd Fick¡¦s laws. Treatment time and thickness of hardened layers. Vacuum and plasma carburizing. Thermal treatments after carburizing. Nitriding. Fe-N metastable phase diagram. Leher diagram: effect of NH3/H2 mixtures and constitution of nitride phases. Surface and diffusion layers. Nitrocarburizing.
Carbon and alloyed steels: effect of alloying elements. Stainless steels: Cr influence. Austenitic, ferritic and martensitic steels. Structural steels. Hollomon-Jaffe equation. Weldability of the steels: effect of the chemical compositions. (20 hrs).

Simplified calculation of diffractograms. In laboratory: tensile, hardness and impact tests. Brittle and ductile fracture morphology observed with scanning electron microscopy. Metallography: preparation of samples. Theoretical calculation and plot of Jominy bands of steels. Numerical execises on phase diagrams, on mechanical and thermal properties of materials.

W. D. Callister ¡§Scienza e Ingegneria dei Materiali: una Introduzione¡¨ ¡V EdiSES
G. Ubertalli ¡§Lecture of the Course of TMM ¡¨
Engineering Materials 1- An introd. to properties, appl. and design ¡V Michael F. Ashby / David R.H.Jones ¡V B/H ed. - 2012
Other books:
Recrystallization and Related Annealing Phenomena ¡V F.J.Humphreys and M.Hatherly ¡V Ed. Pergamon - 2004
Aluminum, Volume I: Properties, Physical Metallurgy and Phase Diagrams ¡V John F. Hatch editor - 1967
Magnesium and Magnesium alloy - ASM Specialty Handbook - 1999
The metallurgy of Tool Steel ¡V P.Payson - 1962
ASM HANDBOOK Vol. 1 to 12 - 1991

Written examination will last 2 hours; books and notes will not be available. The exam is a written one, based on 8 questions, at least 4 of them are exercises based on those solved during lectures. The exam is divided in two parts: four questions regards Science and technology of materials, the other four regards Technology of metallic materials. Students must have at least 9 points for each one of the two parts. Each question is evaluated a maximum of 3 or 4 points.

For further information please contact:
monica.ferraris@polito.it; graziano.ubertalli@polito.it