Blog — steel manufacturing

TWO metallurgists at Stanford University, seeking to produce a ''superplastic'' metal, appear to have stumbled on the secret of Damascus steel, the legendary material used by numerous warriors of the past, including the Crusaders. Its formula had been lost for generations. Analyses of steel by Jeffrey Wadsworth and Oleg D. Sherby, in their search for a highly plastic form, revealed properties almost identical to those they then found in Damascus steel, though their own plastic steel had been produced through contemporary methods. The remarkable characteristics of Damascus steel became known to Europe when the Crusaders reached the Middle East, beginning...