Alloy Phase Stability: Opening Remarks

Abstract

The problems of phase stability in alloys involve subjects that fall quite naturally between metallurgy and metal physics. By metallurgy we mean, for the most part, the more traditional aspects of the structure-property relations in metals and alloys and their manipulation by heat treatment, although a principal purpose of this Advanced Study Institute (ASI) is to demonstrate the continuing success that physics is having in dealing with metallurgical complexity. By metal physics, we mean the application of quantum theory, classical mechanics and elasticity, and statistical mechanics to metallic alloys. The dichotomy, actually, has always been somewhat artificial, especially as many of the most insightful advances in metallurgy have come from chemists, physicists and crystallographers who have chosen to work on alloys and their phase relations and properties. It could nonetheless have been said some years ago that if one studied the Fermi surface of pure copper one was a physicist whereas if one wanted to understand the alloying effects of Zn on, for example, the hardness of Cu, one was a physical metallurgist. [And if one wished to design a heat treatment to optimize the properties of an alloy, ferrous or otherwise, one was certainly a metallurgist!]