ASM Dayton December 10, 2009 Meeting

Dayton Engineer’s Club, Dayton Ohio

5:30 PM Networking followed by Dinner

$25, Students for Free

7:00 PM Presentation:

ANCIENT ARTS OF SWORD-MAKING

or:

FROM THE CUTTING-EDGE OF ANCIENT SWORDS TO THE CUTTING-EDGE OF AEROSPACE MATERIALS

Dr. Daniel Eylon, Professor and Director

Graduate Materials Engineering

University of Dayton

300 College Park

Dayton OH 45469-0240, USA

Making sword-blades requires the use of metals and structures combining high-strength, to retain the blade edge sharpness, and high-toughness, to resist fracture during combat. As metallurgists know very well, it is difficult to combine strength and fracture toughness as increase of one, typically, reduces the other. During over three thousand years, sword-smiths in different corners of the earth produced superior blades with unrivaled qualities, by using different approaches. This presentation will concentrate on the ancient art of making Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, Roman, Damascus, Korean and Japanese swords, all representing the highest level of structural efficiency. Accurate details on making these swords are not entirely known, but recent metallurgical studies have cast more light on the subject. It is surprising that some of these ancient methods were so advanced that only recent developments in aerospace structures, tool steels, and metal-matrix composites are now capable of producing materials with similar combinations of mechanical properties and structural efficiency.

BIO

Dr. Daniel Eylon received his B.Sc. in mechanical engineering and his M.Sc. and D.Sc. in materials engineering, all from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He has lived in Dayton, Ohio (USA) since 1972 and worked in association with the US Air Force Materials Directorate at WPAFB till 1985 on the development of titanium alloys. Since 1986 he has been a professor in the Graduate Materials Engineering Program at the University of Dayton and is now also the program director. In the past ten years most of his research work was devoted to powder, casting and high temperature titanium alloy technologies. He has over 300 papers and 50 patents in the area of structural metals. He is a Fellow of the ASM (FASM), a member of the European Academy of Sciences (EAS) and enjoys studying, researching, lecturing and writing on the evolution, history and archaeology of metals (archaeometallurgy).