Industry News

Iron and Steel

BHP Billiton Reaches Terms for Significant Amounts of Its 2010 Coking Coal Volumes

BHP Billiton today announced that it had reached terms for a significant portion of its hard coking coal volumes for 2010, based on a structural change to shorter term market based pricing for the con...

Journal Dedicates Issue to Effects of Climate Change on Steel Infrastructure

Whilst much research is devoted to understanding and predicting climate change, relatively little attention is focused on the effect it may have on steel infrastructure. Climate change-induced variati...

Siemens to Supply Components for Dedusting System at ArcelorMittal Steel Plant

The Siemens Industry Solutions Division received an order from ArcelorMittal Bremen GmbH, a German flat-steel producer, to supply the electrical and automation equipment for the new secondary dedustin...

Linde Oxyfuel Technology HElps ArcelorMittal Win AIST Energy Award

Oxyfuel technology plus know how developed and deployed by Linde North America has helped ArcelorMittal win the Association for Iron Steel Technology (AIST) 2009 Energy Achievement Award. The award...

Air Products to Invest €75 million in Chinese Steel Industry

Air Liquide has signed long-term contracts with two steel producers in China and will invest €75 million overall to meet the needs of these new customers. This investment strengthens the Group's leadi...

Aluminum

VHE Stimir Anode Milling Machines Save Aluminium Smelters Money

Anodes are the single biggest consumable cost in a primary aluminium smelter; maximising anode lifetime can lead to substantial economies. A common problem in deteriorating anode performance is th...

Alcoa Sign Long Term Power Contracts for Australian ALuminum Smelters

Alcoa of Australia Limited and Loy Yang Power today announced new base-load electricity contracts to power Alcoa's aluminum smelter at Point Henry, Geelong, and the Portland aluminum smelter to 2036. ...

Hydro Ceases Aluminium Tube Production in Michigan

Hydro has discontinued production and closed the doors at its aluminium tubing plant in Michigan, winding up the closure process that started last year and ending 70 years of manufacturing operations ...

New Aluminum Alloy for Armor Plating Makes its Debut

Alcoa (NYSE:AA) announced today the development of a new aluminum alloy armor plate solution - C79A. Designed to better protect soldiers in combat environments, C79A will be introduced for military ve...

Alcoa to Participate in Product Life Cycle Emissions testing Protocol

Alcoa (NYSE:AA) announced today that it is among 60 corporations pilot testing a draft protocol for accounting and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across a product's life cycle. The Greenhous...

Materials Science

Computer Model Predicts How Cracks Form and Proliferate

In research published in the March 4 issue of the journal Nature, Northeastern University physicists have pioneered the development of large-scale computer simulations to assess how cracks form and pr...

Nanobubbles Observed to Prevent Water from Wetting Super Non-Stick Surfaces

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have obtained the first glimpse of miniscule air bubbles that keep water from wetting a super non-stick surface. Detailed i...

Cracking the Termination Reaction in Radical Polymerization

Although radical polymerization is used in the synthesis of about half the world's polymers, details of exactly what is going on in the reaction soup in complex industrial settings have been sketchy a...

RHIC Experiments Provide A Better Understanding of the Structure of Protons

At a meeting this week of the American Physical Society in Washington, MIT Associate Professor of Physics Bernd Surrow reported on new results from the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Co...

Breakthrough in Predicting How Molecules Self Organize

Some classes of molecules are capable of arranging themselves in specific patterns on surfaces. This ability to self-organize is crucial for many technological applications, which are dependend on the...

Economic News

Consumer credit posts first rise in a year

(Reuters) – Total U.S. consumer credit rose $4.96 billion in January, its first rise in a year and the largest for any month since mid-2008, Federal Reserve data showed on Friday. Read the full story HERE.

Payrolls data buoy job creation hopes

(Reuters) – U.S. employers cut fewer jobs than expected during snow-battered February and the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent, bolstering views the economy was on the brink of creating jobs. Read the full story here.

Fed says economy stronger in February despite snow

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Economic activity strengthened modestly across most of the 12 Federal Reserve districts during February and likely would have done better if not for heavy snowstorms that battered many areas. Read the full story HERE.

Data points to U.S. job market nearing rebound

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private jobs data and a Federal Reserve report showed glimmers of improvement in the U.S. labor market last month, considered key to propelling the economic recovery, while the U.S. services sector grew at its fastest pace since the recession began. Read the full story HERE.

Job cuts fall in February to lowest since 2006

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms fell in February to the lowest level since 2006, and employers appear to have shifted away from downsizing even though hiring may be a while off, a report on Wednesday showed. Read the full story HERE.

Welcome to the Notre Dame Chapter Website!

Details for the "STEELS 101" Seminar (Click Here)

Be sure to click above for information regarding the March 2010 Seminar titled "Steels 101".

-Josh (Webmaster)

Chapter Specific News

Website updated as of January 2010

“The Link” newsletter for January 2010 is available HERE and the January 2010 technical meeting details can be found HERE. I hope everyone had a great holiday break and is ready to get back and active in 2010!

-Josh (Webmaster)

PS: There will be a new website coming online shortly for the Engineer’s Week dinner which can be found at http://www.Engineers-Week.com Be sure to check it out and place your reservation

October 2009 Link Available

The October version of “The Link” newsletter is now available on the Link page.

Chapter Scholarship Information Posted

As the title says, I got around to posting the chapter scholarship information on the new website. It can be found under the “Events” menu button, or by clicking here. We hope to see many applications this year. Best of luck to you all!

September Technical Meeting Results

Bob and Joe at General Sheet Metal

Last night was the September technical meeting. Our tour took place at General Sheet Metal here in South Bend.

The tour was very interesting and I would like to personally thank the guys (Joe and Seth) from General who led the tour and answered our many questions. It is no wonder why they are a leader in their field. We had dinner at Tippecanoe place and it was fantastic as usual.

I would also like to thank the newcomers who attended. We had a good turnout with over 12 people. Lets try to get even more next time.

October 2009 – Technical Meeting Information – Available

The October technical meeting details are now available on the website.

Click Here

Website Update – 25AUG09

Just a quick note…The contact form is functional, except there is a bug I’m working on for the comments field. You can put comments in the name or email field for now. I’m working to get it resolved. I have received a couple messages that were missing the comments, which tipped me onto the bug.

-Josh

Update (23SEP09) – The bug is resolved and the contact form should be fully functional again.

First Post

smasm This is mostly a test post just to allow some website testing.

This will be our official ND-ASM.org blog. You shouldn’t ever have to actually visit this site (although you can if you want to), I’ll be pulling all of these posts directly into the RSS widget on the left side of the ND-ASM website. It’s the top accordian file. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Webmaster@ND-ASM.org

-Josh