Experts Identify ESSENTIAL READINGS IN MAGNESIUM
Kelly Zappas
For more than a decade, the TMS Magnesium Technology Symposium has offered a recognized forum for presenting the latest advances in a members have sifted through the published proceedings of these symposia-more than 1,000 papers in all-to present the best of the best
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Magnesium Technology has evolved
into one of the largest symposia
held at the TMS Annual Meeting &
Exhibition each year.
Magnesium research and
technology has seen a huge surge in
the last decade, and this is evident
in the expansion of the Magnesium
Technology symposium and
proceedings, which have grown
from approximately
50 presentations/
papers in 2000,
to more than 100
presentations/papers
in 2012, said
Suveen N. Mathaudhu, lead editor for
the volume.
During that time, the focus of the
research presented at the symposium
has evolved and trends have shifted.
All of this is captured in the Essential
Readings collection.
In 1999, the driver for increased
use of magnesium was cost
reduction, said Eric Nyberg, who
edited the Magnesium Technology
proceedings from 2008 to 2010.
Today the concerns have less to
do with cost and more to do with
performance. Can you provide a
lower density part, at or near the cost
of other materials, while maintaining
or improving performance?
Magnesium technology, in general,
has also accepted the need to
become more environmentally
friendly. Developments in
lowemission primary production
are now a recognizable concern
and many advances have been
the pollutants released. Similarly,
methods to eliminate the use of
gas in processes involving molten
magnesium have been realized.
Taken as a whole, the papers
presented in Essential Readings
in Magnesium Technology play an
important role by offering a
bigpicture view of the magnesium
industryboth of the technologys
past and its future.
Future trends have to have
a basic understanding of past
successes and failures, said Neale
R. Neelameggham, who edited the
Magnesium Technology proceedings
from 2006 to 2012. This volume of
Essential Readings is providing that
opportunity.
A Nine-Part Examination of
Magnesium Technology
The volume is divided into nine
sectionseach one focusing on
a different area of magnesium
technology and each one introduced
by a different editor. All of the
editors selected for this volume have
served as a Magnesium Technology
symposium organizer and as editor
of past Magnesium Technology
proceedings.
Essential Readings presents papers
in the following nine subject areas:
Magnesium Technology History
and Overview
Electrolytic and Thermal Primary
Production
Life-Cycle Analysis
Alloy and Microstructural Design
Wrought Processing
Modeling and Simulation
Joining
Corrosion, Surface Treatment,
and Coating
For more on the section editors and
their comments on the development
sidebar article, Meet the Editors.
Though each editor focused on
different aspects of magnesium
technology, they all seemed to agree
that the process of editing the book
was a learning experience in itself.
Working on this volume
from a somewhat different, wider
perspective, said Wim Sillekens, who
edited the Magnesium Technology
proceedings from 2010 to 2012.
For Mathaudhu, the process of
editing the book was as educational
for him as the editors hope it will be
for readers.
Being the lead editor, but also the
youngest of the team of co-editors,
it was inevitable that I would learn
assembling the volume, whereas many
of the co-editors have been studying
magnesium alloys for decades, said
Mathaudhu. This new knowledge
certainly gave me a renewed
appreciation of the history and
longlasting implications of the Magnesium
Technology symposium. I believe
that whether a reader is new to the
be something new and interesting to
appreciate from the volume.
What Makes a Paper Essential
Reading?
The editorial team selected nearly
100 papers, carefully chosen from
the more than 1,000 manuscripts
published in Magnesium Technology
between 2000 and 2012, for the
volume. Because fewer than 10%
of all papers were chosen, three
selection of the papers:
General Relevance: All
papers selected as Best Paper
Award winners for their years
in the student and contributed
categories were included, as
these manuscripts represented the
Many review papers that
summarized the state-of-the-art
in magnesium technology were
also included.
The
number of times a paper was
cited was also used as a measure
to indicate its essential value.
Highly cited papers were selected
for inclusion in this volume.
Industrial Relevance: Also
included are Best Paper Award
winners in application, a
category that was added in 2007
to the student and contributed
awards. These manuscripts were
selected for inclusion because
of their representation of
leapforward advances and novel
demonstrations of industrial
applications.
Looking to the Future
While the papers provide an
in-depth look at past trends in the
magnesium industry, they also offer
a preview of what lies ahead. The
volumes editors believe that m (...truncated)