September 16-20, 2007

Report on joint American Ceramic Society/Association for Iron & Steel Technology/ASM International/The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society [Materials Science & Technology ’07] meeting, Detroit, MI, SA, 16-20 Sept. 2007.

Conference Report by Lou Vance

This was the second of such joint meetings, in which the American Ceramic Society no longer goes alone for its Annual Meeting. Thus the materials of interest were basically alloys and ceramics. There were around ~2000 papers for the meeting. The meeting was densely attended for the first half, decreasing significantly with time. As usual, there were many parallel sessions, so I can really only comment on the ones I attended: radwaste and GEN IV reactor materials, point defects in ceramics, high-temperature superconductors, and high-temperature structural materials.

Km-long high-temperature superconductor wires can now be produced and several power companies have signed up to build real cables for use for grid subscribers in the next 2-3 yr. These would be several hundred meters long, and would transmit hundreds of A and powers of tens of MW.

There were a lot of papers on computer-design of glasses for dealing with immobilisation of very inhomogeneous US tank wastes from weapons production, based on many years of lab studies. Container corrosion by molten salts for pyroprocessing of spent nuclear reactor fuel was argued to be potentially serious and graphite appeared to be the best candidate (metals reputedly no good).

Cermets like ZrC/Mo and W-TaC, and ceramics such as Mo5Si3C were studied in the context of high-temperature structural performance.

Basic studies of transport in electronic ceramics containing various impurities in solid solution were widely discussed, with emphasis on the nature of the lattice defects themselves.

Trade Exhibition Report by Cameron Chai

For me this was a truly eye-opening experience. While the combined might of 4 of the world's most siginificant materials societies had combined to produce a single event, there shear size of the event was not something you could imagine until you actaually walked in. Unfortunately, this event dwarfs any Austceram, but considering the resources available from the organising socities, it really should.

With a reported 6500 delegates, not counting walk ins to the exhibition, and parallel technical session in rooms that seemed to stretch for half a kilometre, the trade exhibition itself hosted over 300 exhibitors, thanks to the biennial contribution of the heat treating society. To give you an idea of how biig the convention centre is, it has its own stop, for their equivalent of the monorail, and the monorail itself travels inside the exhibition hall, which again you wouldn't believe uless you actaully saw it.

Many of the big name materials, equipment and testing manufacturers were there, along with many smaller manufacturers and suppliers. On display were items that could easily fit in your hand, to those that must have been brought in using a serious forklift or small crane.

The overall atmosphere was good, although many exhibitors were a little disappointed by the levels of traffic, but lenty of valuable contacts were made. The venue itself was good, although Detroit seemed fairly quiet to me. I was expecting a bigger bustling city, with loads of cars, given Detroit is after all "Motor City".

I also carried out a series of interviews with several of the exhibitors, asking the about their latest products and developments. To hear what hey had to say, click on the links ot go to listen to their podcasts.