Bessemer Memorial Lecture: The dimensions of steel

Abstract

There are important aspects of steel which are hidden from ordinary view and largely from the users of steels. They nevertheless determine the macroscopic behaviour. One example is that the magnetic properties of austenite determine that it has a larger thermal expansion coefficient than ferrite, whereas intuition would suggest otherwise given that austenite has a greater density. This and other aspects of the physical and descriptive dimensions of steel are described in this paper.