Sunrise in Steel Town: A Renaissance in Steel
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Sunrise in Steel Town: A Renaissance in Steel
The North American steel industry, once written off as a "sun-downer industry" and an "aging dinosaur" by prognosticators, has had a remarkable renaissance in the last 10 years and has again become competitive in a global market. 1 This rebirth has been difficult and has led to a complete restructuring of traditional companies and the growth of new, aggressive companies. In the early 1980s it did not seem feasible that within 10 years the Whoever said that the steel industry is als cycle: Iron and steel scrap has become the industry would not only be restructured but would become a fertile opportunity dead? It is alive and flourishing, this time with new raw material, curtailing the global an efficiency and environmental cleanliness hunger for newly mined iron ores. In a sense, for investors and entrepreneurs through which new companies would be formed, that will make the semiconductor industry this recycling is an atonement of the excesses proud! The renaissance is not local, limited to of the earlier decades when mining and metal- plants built, and products sold to a growing domestic market. a few developed economies, but global, based lurgical industries paid little attention to on innovations in iron and steel technology energy efficiency and environmental protecGrowth in the North American steel and on technology spillover from other areas. tion. Experts now agree that these and industry has been due to new aggressive increasing competition from other materials The appetite for steel has not decreased: investment and management philosophies Developing economies such as China and drove the industry to its near extinction. How and to the development of new technoloIndia need millions of tons to build their inade- real then is this renaissance and what are the gies that have allowed long- and flat-rolled quate and overstretched infrastructure, and technology drivers for the growth? Will steel products to be produced in new scrapthe developed countries demand new steels regain its pride of place among materials used with superior properties for applications in by society? In the following article, Alan areas previously reserved for other materials. Cramb reviews the spectacular growth of this Material Matters is a forum for Today the global production of steel is assessedindustry and predicts an exciting future for it. expressing personal points of Silicon, it seems, is not eliminating steel from not by mere tonnages but by their quality. view on issues of interest to the our materials consciousness! A major attraction of the iron and steel materials community. V.S. ARUNACHALAM industry is its compatibility with the materi-
Alan W. Cramb
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• Uniaxial or biaxial anisotropy • Refractive index (n and k) • Film thickness (single or multilayers) • Optical grad
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