| Abstract Scope |
All metallurgy students have thermodynamics and diffusion in their curriculum. Nevertheless, this knowledge is difficult to use in real life because the students do not learn how to apply their knowledge to engineering. The problems considered in their education are too far from the real problems in metallurgical industry. Real steels have many alloy elements and phases and are far from binary phase diagrams in textbooks. Real processes have complex boundary conditions, i.e., variation in temperature, furnace atmosphere, etc.
The situation has changed drastically by the spread of CALPHAD technology in recent decades. The technology was initially for calculation of multicomponent phase diagram but was later extended to diffusion kinetics. It became a basis for integrated computational engineering (ICME). The industrial demand for these tools has led to several small enterprises, e.g., QuesTek, FactSage, Thermo-Calc Software, CompuTherm, etc.
This presentation gives a brief historical survey over the development of the field. It will be illustrated by various industrial problems that were successfully tackled by the technique. For example, reactions in joints of dissimilar steels, such as bimetal saw blades and composite steel tubes, development of high-performance steels, etc |