Chet Inman Award 2006

The ASM Worcester Chapter held its annual awards night on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at O'Connors Restaurant, 1160 W. Boylston St., Worcester. The award this year went to Virendra Warke, our Graduate Student from Pune, India.

Virendra Warke is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Materials Science at WPI. He received his Bachelor's degree in Metallurgy Engineering from University of Pune, India in 1998.

He arrived at WPI in fall 2001 for pursuing MS in the field of Materials Science. In his master's thesis, He developed a mathematical model and computer simulation for the very crucial process named Degassing. This process is widely used in casting industries for cleaning the molten metal prior to casting. It was a real challenge to develop a model of very complicated process, which involves multiphase fluid flow; complicated particle dynamics and effect of dissolve gases. This research has been published in Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 2005 and this work won him 2003 Sigma Xi award (WPI chapter) for best master's thesis of the year.

Virendra is currently pursuing Ph.D. at WPI, supported by Morris Boorkey graduate fellowship. His current research involves developing a model to predict heat treatment response of powder metallurgy steel components. P/M components experience considerable changes during heat treatment that include changes in mechanical properties, in dimensions, in magnitude and sense of residual stresses, and in metallurgical phase composition. Since the quality assurances criteria that heat-treated P/M components must meet include prescribed minimum mechanical properties and compliance with dimensional tolerances, it is necessary for P/M producers to be able to accurately predict these changes in order to take appropriate measures to prevent their harmful effects and insure the production of good quality parts. The model developed from this research will enable prediction of dimensional changes due to distortion, residual stresses, hardness, and fractions of metallurgical phases, for the prescribed heat treatment cycle.

Highlights of the Evening

Aparna, Huanan, Shelley	Shimin, Xiaolan, and Virendra
Virendra receiving award from David French	Virendra receiving ASM plaque

Guest Speaker

SPEAKER: Richard Kennedy, Allvac V.P. of R&D, FASM, ASM Trustee
Dick Kennedy received his BS and MS in Metallurgical Engrg. from Mich. State U. and NC State U. He began his career in 1962 with Pratt & Whitney at their R&D Center in West Palm Beach and joined Allvac in 1965, becoming VP of R&D in 1986. His group played a key role in a number of important Allvac developments such as Clean Metal Spray Forming and Nucleated Casting; U-720 billet and bar; Gatorizable(r) Waspaloy and GE 1014 engine shafts; new aerospace alloys 718Plus(tm), 13-8 Supertough(r), M50Al(tm) and S240(tm); Ti and Co based biomedical alloys and very large diameter superalloy ingots.
He has published numerous articles on the processing and properties of Ni-base superalloys and specialty steels and has 13 issued US patents.

TOPIC: Allvac(r) 718Plus(r), a New Wrought Nickel-Base Superalloy

Allvac(r) 718Plus(r) alloy is a new nickel-base superalloy with a highly desirable combination of excellent mechanical properties, increased temperature capability, good fabricability and moderate cost. These characteristics position the alloy to fill the longstanding gap between the two most widely used wrought superalloys, 718 and Waspaloy. The development of alloy 718Plus will be reviewed, including the effects of chemistry, heat treatment, processing and structure on mechanical properties and ongoing applications development. Superalloy comparisons will show that alloy 718Plus is the best available candidate to sustain advances in engine development made possible over the 40+ year life of alloy 718.

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Last modified: Feb 28, 2007, 13:39 EST