EPMA announces dates of SUMMEREV 21 hard materials event
May 20, 2021
The European Powder Metallurgy Association (EPMA)’s European Hard Materials Group (EuroHM) has announced that its SUMMEREV 21 event will take place virtually June 8-9, 2021. This event plans to highlight the practical steps being taken to process innovative compositions, what new ideas are being explored to measure their relevant properties and what insights the modelling community can provide.
Typically, hard tool materials are multiphase materials with carbide, carbonitride, diamond or cubic boron nitride phases toughened or supported by a secondary, smaller volume fraction of what is generally referred to as a binder-phase. For hardmetals, this binder-phase is based on a transition metal or alloy using Fe, Co and Ni as the major constituents.
However, one of the most popular binder-phase constituents, cobalt, has proven problematic, with resource constraints, cost and health concerns acting as drivers for hard materials manufacturers to assess the possibility of either making better use of cobalt or to seek alternative metallic replacements altogether.
Recently, there have been huge steps in methods for local mechanical characterisation at extremely high resolution (i.e., micromechanical test methods for both elastic and plastic property measurement of both individual particles and interfaces). Additionally, the importance and impact of modelling of each phase’s mechanical and physical behaviour on very fine scales has also made substantial contributions to our knowledge of new material combinations.
The aim of the 2021 event is to bring the hard material research community together to discuss current activity in methods used to manufacture innovative materials and to characterise properties, both physical and mechanical.
SUMMEREV 21 will also serve to commemorate PM pioneer Dr Leo Prakash, who died in 2019.
Further information, including the schedule, is available via the EPMA’s SUMMEREV 21 page.
