Advances in ironmaking and steelmaking technology have undoubtedly played a major role in the rapid economic development in China over the past three decades, and the steel industry in China has developed over into the worlds biggest. In 2010, crude steel production in China reached 626·7 million tons. To promote steel research collaboration between the UK and China, the 1st UK-China Steel Research Forum was held from the 18th to 20th July 2010 at the University of Leicester, UK. Seventy five people attended the forum, representing twenty universities and fifteen research and industrial companies from both the UK and China. The Forum provided a platform for scientists, engineers, technologists and steel industry leaders to discuss and exchange recent advances in steel research and development, and was a unique and valuable opportunity for academic institutions and industrial companies to develop joint research projects, to foster steel research collaborations between the two countries.
The selection of papers in this part-special issue of Ironmaking and Steelmaking provides a representative view of the rapidly developing research activities in the UK and China. A review of current research at Tata Steel through national and international, academic and industrial collaborations, targeting some of the great complexity exhibited by microstructural evolution in steels, will be presented first in this issue. It will be followed by five leading-edge research papers in the areas of the effects of stress and strain on crystallographic orientation of bainite, numerical simulation of gas-solid heat transfer process of high temperature sintering, first principle and experimental study of oxide/alloy interface evolution during hot rolling, modelling of fluid flow and solidification in continuous slab casting and recent developments in fundamental research on steels used in the automobile industry. It is our hope that this special issue will further highlight the advances being made in steel research in the UK and China.
Dr. Hongbiao Dong
Department of Engineering
University of Leicester
Dr. R Vasant Kumar
Department of Materials Science
University of Cambridge