Euromat (the European Congress on Advanced Materials and Processes) is the prime event in Europe for academics and industrialists active in materials science and materials engineering. It has been held every two years since 1989 under the auspices of the Federation of European Materials Societies (FEMS). Euromat is a ‘full topic conference’, open to contributions in a broad range of subjects dealing with the science and technology of materials. For someone who wants to know what is happening in the materials world, in the widest perspective, Euromat is the place. It provides a unique opportunity to meet colleagues working in complementary areas that sometimes offer us, as powder metallurgists, interesting ideas to be implemented in our technology.
The last congress, held in the historic city of Seville on 8–13 September 2013, attracted more than 2400 contributions. The technical programme was structured into 7 areas, 27 main topics and 58 symposia. Analysing the technical programme, the only ‘main topic’ to include the word ‘powder’ was topic C3: ‘Nano-powder and solution routes: synthesis to materials’. This topic comprised four symposia: ‘Nano-powder development by advanced techniques’, ‘Advanced processing methods to maintain nano-features from the powder’, ‘Processing of ceramics and their mechanical properties’ and ‘Additive manufacturing and other near net shape techniques’. Going through the titles of contributions to these four symposia, and many other symposia devoted to different so called ‘advanced materials’, it is possible to find more than 200 oral presentations where powder metallurgy has some leadership. Many of the authors, and even the studied topics, of these papers, are inhabitants of other worlds that never attend the conventional PM conferences such as Euro PM or the World Congresses organised by the sectoral PM organisations. Hundreds of papers of missing science and technology relevant to our PM world. This fact should force to us to make some kind of consideration.
This issue of Powder Metallurgy includes a selection of papers from the Euromat sessions featuring research on current topics that include additive manufacturing, alternative binder systems related to injection moulding of special materials (e.g. ODS steels and intermetallics) and advanced manufacturing shaping technologies (e.g. spark plasma sintering). All contributions have been refereed according to standard review procedures.
José M. Torralba
Guest Editor
IMDEA Materials Institute, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid